Myth #1: Speed Kills

This slogan, borrowed from the Department of Transportation, was introduced following the 1968 "Summer of Love" in Haight-Ashbury and is perpetuated to this day. In reality, the only correlation between meth and death is the two words happen to rhyme. A closer look at the raw data from which government agencies like the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration derive their "statistics" reveals the truth.

According to the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN), an office of the US Department of Health, there were 1,206 "mentions" of drug deaths attributable to amphetamines in 40 metropolitan areas in 1999. However, this figure includes individuals with chronic and acute diseases of the heart, kidneys, and liver as well as people who mixed amphetamines with other drugs (usually depressants). [1]

Clearly, one cannot objectively blame amphetamines for the death of individuals who used them hap hazardously with pre-existing conditions any more than one can blame a pin prick for causing the death of a haemophiliac. In addition, those few individuals foolish enough to mix meth with other drugs die from the accumulative effect of the depressant family of drugs, or in rare cases, from the synergistic effect of depressants mixed with stimulants. If one subtracts these cases from the total:

21 people died (representing less than 1% of total drug deaths) as the direct result of using amphetamines in 41 metro areas in 1998 and even these numbers appear suspect when one considers that there were only 43 documented speed related deaths in the entire world in the thirty year period between the end of World War II and 1975. [2]

The Merck Manual, one of the most respected medical publications in the world, reports: "Even massive doses are rarely fatal. Long-term users have reportedly injected as much as 15,000 mg. of amphetamines in 24 hours without observable acute illness." [3]

Myth #2: Meth Is Linked to Violent Crime

Because it is a powerful stimulant which increases energy and libido along with its early association with motorcycle gangs, meth has been unfairly accused as the underlying cause in numerous rape, assault and murder cases. Even liberal poet Allen Ginsberg in his 1965 interview with the Los Angeles Free Press complained, "All the nice gentle dope fiends are getting screwed up by the real horror monster Frankenstein speed freaks." [4] Even today sensationalist stories like the following persist:

· Father beheads 14 year old son he believes was possessed by Satan. [5]
· Four-year-old girl discovered beaten to death by her parents. [6]
· Ex-National Guardsman steals tank . . . crushes cars. [7]

In each of these cases, Meth was deemed the culprit. Grisly details of the above were used by the DEA in testimony before Congress and the Attorney General of California in his re-election campaign. Anyone even remotely familiar with the effects of meth know such accusations to be ludicrous. Even the US Department of Justice was forced to admit no such link exists. The findings were reported in Meth Matters - a study of abuse of the drug in five western cities, issued by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) in 1999 during a meeting of the Methamphetamine Interagency Task Force. It revealed that meth users were "significantly less likely than other drug arrestees to be charged with a violent offense." Jack Riley, director of the NIJ's drug-abuse monitoring efforts, said the results were not surprising. It's a common misconception that methamphetamine is concretely linked to violent crime. I've never seen that before, just as it was never observable with cocaine," Riley said. [8]

Myth #3: Meth Causes Psychosis & Schizophrenia

These two mental diseases are generally permanent, incurable and require large doses of strong medications in order to keep them under minimal control. Amphetamines do not cause these diseases. They can, however, cause the user to temporarily suffer symptoms (hallucinations, paranoia) which are associated with psychosis and schizophrenia. These are generally brought on by inducing large quantities and/or taking them for several consecutive days. Hallucinations are brought on not so much by the direct action of the drug but by sleep deprivation.

For those who still remain unconvinced as a result of this clarification, we can look to Japan for answers. They invented meth in 1919 and endured an epidemic of abuse during the post-war American Occupation the likes of which this country will hopefully never have to experience. Like most of the major combatants in World War II, the Japanese pumped amphetamines down the throats of soldiers and industrial workers. At the end of the war, huge stockpiles were found in cities all over the country. The quantity of the drug was exceeded only by the quality. Unlike the present day American meth - manufactured in clandestine labs with shortcut recipes and then laced with adulterants - the Japanese counterpart was synthesized in government facilities under the strictest quality controls. With the exception of Korean and Taiwanese free base, more commonly known as "Ice", it is probably the most potent meth ever produced.

More importantly, the subsequent research on the drug, like their meth, was untainted by politics. A thirty-year timeframe along with huge cross sections of research on sub-populations make for ideal longitudinal studies, the consensus of which was: that in cases where permanent schizophrenia and psychoses has been attributed to addiction, it appears that the underlying ailment was either latent or had existed all along and the meth use had simply exacerbated the symptoms to a degree where it could be finally diagnosed. [9]

Myth #4: Meth Is Addictive

If speed is so addicting, where are the "addicted" recipients of over 200 million amphetamine tablets consumed by GI’s in World War II? If there were any problems then it is extremely doubtful that Uncle Sam would upgrade to meth (six times stronger) and churn it out in even greater quantities in Korea and Vietnam? The only veteran-related drug concern that came out of the latter was the use of high-grade heroin - a physically addicting drug. Today, the term 'addiction' is a controversial catch-all that has subjective meaning and is all too frequently used in objective scientific contexts. But prior to 1994, addiction had two qualifiers: physical and psychological dependency, with the former being more the more severe of the two.

A physically dependent drug was one that provoked specific observable effects if the subject significantly decreased or stopped use of the drug . These could range all the way from flu-like symptoms such as vomiting, sweating, and high fever from cessation of heroin to shaking, delirium tremens and death from alcohol withdrawal.