Methamphetamine Scourge Continues
As a prelude, there were 118 cases on the Jasper County Superior Court Criminal Trial calendar on Monday, Jan. 23. Of these, 14 were for possession of methamphetamine or meth, for short. Four were for distribution, and two for trafficking—a total of 20 cases, or 17 percent of the total calendar.
Also, there were 40 other criminal charges spread over these 20 cases. The scourge continues.
As to what we can do to stop it, we have see a downturn in the number of domestic labs in Georgia, due to the passage of House Bill 216 last year, which requires retail stores which sell cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient in making meth, to place the products behind their counters rather than leave them out to sell openly. Since then the average number of lab busts per month in the state has dropped from 40 to 13.
This helps in a lot of ways, but the supply keeps pouring in from Mexico and Southern California. Even though our neighbor nation to the South has imposed its own restriction on the importation of pseudoephedrine from the U.S., they continue to get it from other parts of the world, and large drug organizations run by Mexican Nationalist manufacture and distribute the drug.
Investigator Mike Steele with the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office believes the solution is long range, through public awareness and public education.
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“Until we educate the public and the children on the risks and hazards of using meth, the numbers are going to continue to go up because there is a lot of it available and supplies are becoming more plentiful.
“In the meantime, we’re implementing programs in schools to educate kids at a younger level. We teach them that the drugs they see on the streets and are offered to them are dangerous and they need to stay away from them.”
While we continue to fill our courtrooms and jails, most experts agree on the importance of treatment as a solution, as well as being less expensive than incarceration.
As the use of meth continues to rise, so does the number of addicts admitted to treatment programs. That number has risen to almost 4,400 last year in the state, a 182 percent increase from three years ago.
Recently, Gov. Sonny Perdue asked the legislature to fund a special meth task force, and for a $1 million increase in the funding of meth treatment programs.
Below is a portion of a conversation with two former users attempting to rehabilitate themselves, which will perhaps portray the depths of the addiction:
•”I haven’t used meth in two years now, but I still think about it every five minutes. I’m 31 now, and used drugs for 12 years, but meth was always my favorite. I started off snorting it, then smoked it, then injected it. I got so skinny I could hardly stand up anymore. I lost all sense of morality.
“I lied, stole, cheated, robbed and did everything and anything I could to stay high. I lost my family, friends, job, hope, and I didn’t think about any of it—only the meth. After my second stroke I was in a coma for four days.
“When I woke up the doctor told me I had full blown AIDS, and started me on a drug that saved my life, but makes me ill. I spend my days vomiting and having diarrhea, I have no friends, no family, just my destroyed body and time to waste. And I still think about using meth.”
•”I’m 20-years-old and for the past three years of my life making, selling, and using meth has been my passion. I forgot my family, my friends, and even forgot who I was. I went from 128 pounds to 85 pounds in four months.
“I looked like a walking skeleton, but to myself, I was better looking than any super model. I stayed up for weeks at a time on binges. I’ve been clean now for three months, but I still crave it every day. Three months ago I got out of jail for manufacturing meth. It was a long hard road of involuntary rehab, but I survived knowing what kind of time I could have been sentenced to. I was lucky to have people on the outside who loved me and still cared. This is only the beginning of a long hard road that I will have to walk the rest of my life.”
