On Speed: The Many Lives of Amphetamine

8. Fast Forward: Still on Speed, 1971 to Today

8 Fast Forward Still on Speed, 1971 to Today AMPHETAMINE AND METHAMPHETAMINE passed through the complete life cycle between the mid-1930s, when they were first heralded as miracle drugs, and the mid-1970s, by which time both drugs were widely viewed as public enemies and their medical use diminished to a trickle. With declining medical consumption, street consumption declined sharply too, as recreational users had to rely mainly on illicit manufacturers for amphetamine supplies. Illicit speed remained available, but by the late 1970s cocaine far outstripped amphetamines as America’s favorite stimulant.1 Amphetamine’s rise and fall was dramatic but hardly unique. From cocaine to chloral hydrate to the barbiturates, many psychotropic pharmaceuticals had followed the same career path driven by the same major forces—drug industry marketing, trends in medical science , and the practical demands of doctor-patient relationships particularly in general practice.2 Many non-psychotropic drugs had followed a trajectory from glory to infamy as well, although, when medically obsolete, they tended to retire more peacefully, without police intervention. Once dead, these drugs stayed dead or much diminished as mainstream medicines (an afterlife as a recreational drug is not unusual , particularly with a naturally sourced drug like cocaine). What is so unusual about amphetamine is that, within two decades, the drug had returned from the dead in multiple new forms, and in force. For not only are amphetamines back as a widespread and devastating drug of abuse—particularly methamphetamine (known as “meth,” “ice,” “crank,” etc.), the old scourge of Haight-Ashbury—but, as we shall see, so, too, have the drugs made a major and troubling resurgence in medicine. 222 Illicit Use:The Speed Freak’s Back in Town The speed freak or “meth-head” or, less colloquially, high-dose amphetamine abuser has made a frightening comeback in recent years. Certainly amphetamine injection never went away, but it declined in the mid-1970s after production quotas imposed by narcotics authorities finally turned off pharmaceutical industry taps. Eventually, however , the illegal drug industry, arguably as adaptable as the pharmaceutical industry, found ways around government restrictions on the starting chemicals used by speed kitchens. By the 1980s, the main type of speed sold on the street in the United States shifted from amphetamine to methamphetamine, and was being made from ephedrine (or its synthetic substitute, pseudoephedrine). Ephedrine is easily extracted from over-the-counter cold medicines, and making it into methamphetamine is easier than amphetamine synthesis—so easy that, given the starting materials, anyone can do it at home. All an amateur chemist needs is the ephedrine, lighter fuel, and a few other common odds and ends like phosphorous from match heads. When knowledge of the process began to spread, illicit production surged.3 U.S. government statistics suggest that the high-dose methamphetamine resurgence began in centers in California, Colorado, Oregon , Oklahoma, and Texas, and has continued growing in these Western areas while spreading eastward since the mid-1980s. Based on emergency room admissions mentioning amphetamines, serious meth abuse doubled nationally from 1983 to 1988, doubled again between 1988 and 1992, and then increased fivefold further from 1992 to 2002. Though the problem has not diminished, the form in which meth is taken has changed since the trend began; since 1992, when around 12 percent of users smoked the drug, smoking became the dominant method of taking it in 2002, with over 50 percent of users preferring this method. Snorting powdered speed up the nose has dropped off radically, whereas injection has remained fairly stable as the second most popular method, at around 30 percent. The preferred method varies, however, with the local drug culture: in 2000, users mostly smoked meth in Southern California, snorted it in Minnesota, and injected it in Texas. The number of people involved is astonishing. In 2004, almost 1.5 million Americans used methamphetamine and 3 million used amphetamines of some kind nonmedically, twice the number of a decade Fast Forward 223 earlier. And although national survey data indicate that for the past few years the overall number of recreational speed users has stabilized , the number of heavy users with addiction problems has doubled since 2002. So the national amphetamine problem is still growing more severe. Recent national surveys show that about 600,000 Americans use amphetamines nonmedically at least weekly and that 250,000 to 350,000 are addicted, twice the number addicted to heroin. Put another way...