Yeah, I know: never trust NBC.  But I wonder if there is any truth in this.

Cliffs notes:

1. Meth use increase has been completely overshadowed by opioids.

2. The number of people showing up in emergency rooms and being hospitalized because of amphetamine use is skyrocketing.

3. The cost of amphetamine-related hospitalizations had jumped from $436 million in 2003 to nearly $2.2 billion by 2015. Medicaid was the primary payer.

4. Meth users are prone to violence and psychotic episodes.

(Being NBC, they don't mention the fact that lots of meth users rob and steal to pay for their habit instead of having 9:00 to 5:00 jobs.)

(Comes now the folks who will say, "The solution is to legalize meth and opioids."  That would be fine if non-drug users didn't have to deal with and pay for the medical care of drug users---not to mention dealing with the threat of theft and robbery to support their habit.)

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The number of people hospitalized because of amphetamine use is skyrocketing in the United States, but the resurgence of the drug has largely been overshadowed by the nation’s intense focus on opioids.

Amphetamine-related hospitalizations jumped by about 245 percent from 2008 to 2015, according to a study published last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association. That dwarfs the rise in hospitalizations from other drugs, such as opioids, which were up by about 46 percent. The most significant increases were in Western states.

The surge in hospitalizations and deaths due to amphetamines “is just totally off the radar,” said Jane Maxwell, an addiction researcher. “Nobody is paying attention.”

Doctors see evidence of the drug’s comeback in emergency departments, where patients arrive agitated, paranoid and aggressive. Paramedics and police officers see it on the streets, where suspects’ heart rates are so high that they need to be taken to the hospital for medical clearance before being booked into jail. And medical examiners see it in the morgue, where in a few states, such as Texas and Colorado, overdoses from meth have surpassed those from the opioid heroin.

Amphetamines are stimulant drugs, which are both legally prescribed to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and produced illegally into methamphetamine. Most of the hospitalizations in the study are believed to be due to methamphetamine use.

Twin Plagues: Meth Rises in Shadow of Opioids

Commonly known as crystal meth, methamphetamine was popular in the 1990s before laws made it more difficult to access the pseudoephedrine, a common cold medicine, needed to produce it. In recent years, law enforcement officials said, there are fewer domestic meth labs and more meth is smuggled in from south of the border.

As opioids become harder to get, police said, more people have turned to meth, which is inexpensive and readily available.

Lupita Ruiz, 25, started using methamphetamine in her late teens but said she has been clean for about two years. When she was using, she said, her heart beat fast, she would stay up all night and she would forget to eat.

Ruiz, who lives in Spokane, Washington, said she was hospitalized twice after having mental breakdowns related to methamphetamine use, including a monthlong stay in a psychiatric ward in 2016. One time, Ruiz said, she yelled at and kicked police officers after they responded to a call to her apartment. Another time, she started walking on a freeway but doesn’t remember why.

“It just made me go crazy,” she said. “I was all messed up in my head.”

The federal government estimates that more than 10,000 people died of meth-related drug overdoses last year. Deaths from meth overdose generally result from multiple organ failure or heart attacks and strokes, caused by extraordinary pulse rates and skyrocketing blood pressure.

In California, the number of amphetamine-related overdose deaths rose by 127 percent, from 456 in 2008 to 1,036 in 2013. At the same time, the number of opioid-related overdose deaths rose by 8.4 percent, from 1,784 to 1,934, according to the most recent data from the state Department of Public Health.

“It taxes your first responders, your emergency rooms, your coroners,” said Robert Pennal, a retired supervisor with the California Department of Justice. “It’s an incredible burden on the health system.”

Costs also are rising. The JAMA study, based on hospital discharge data, found that the cost of amphetamine-related hospitalizations had jumped from $436 million in 2003 to nearly $2.2 billion by 2015. Medicaid was the primary payer.

“There is not a day that goes by that I don’t see someone acutely intoxicated on methamphetamine,” said Dr. Tarak Trivedi, an emergency room physician in Los Angeles and Santa Clara counties. “It’s a huge problem, and it is 100 percent spilling over into the emergency room.”

Trivedi said many psychiatric patients are also meth users. Some act so dangerously that they require sedation or restraints. He also sees people who have been using the drug for a long time and are dealing with the downstream consequences.

In the short term, the drug can cause a rapid heart rate and dangerously high blood pressure. In the long term, it can cause anxiety, dental problems and weight loss.

“You see people as young as their 30s with congestive heart failure as if they were in their 70s,” he said.

Jon Lopey, the sheriff-coroner of Siskiyou County in rural Northern California, said his officers frequently encounter meth users who are prone to violence and in the midst of what appear to be psychotic episodes. Many are emaciated and have missing teeth, dilated pupils and a tendency to pick at their skin because of a sensation of something beneath it.

“Meth is very, very destructive,” said Lopey, who also sits on the executive board of the California Peace Officers Association. “It is just so debilitating the way it ruins lives and health.”

Nationwide, amphetamine-related hospitalizations were primarily due to mental health or cardiovascular complications of the drug use, the JAMA study found. About half of the amphetamine hospitalizations also involved at least one other drug.

Because there has been so much attention on opioids, “we have not been properly keeping tabs on other substance use trends as robustly as we should,” said study author Dr. Tyler Winkelman, a physician at Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis.

Sometimes doctors have trouble distinguishing symptoms of methamphetamine intoxication and underlying mental health conditions, said Dr. Erik Anderson, an emergency room physician at Highland Hospital in Oakland, California. Patients also may be homeless and using other drugs alongside the methamphetamine.

Unlike opioid addiction, meth addiction cannot be treated with medication. Rather, people addicted to the drug rely on counseling through outpatient and residential treatment centers.

The opioid epidemic, which resulted in about 49,000 overdose deaths last year, recently prompted bipartisan federal legislation to improve access to recovery, expand coverage to treatment and combat drugs coming across the border.

There hasn’t been a similar recent legislative focus on methamphetamine or other drugs. And there simply aren’t enough resources devoted to amphetamine addiction to reduce the hospitalizations and deaths, said Maxwell, a researcher at the Addiction Research Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. The number of residential treatment facilities, for example, has continued to decline, she said.

“We have really undercut treatment for methamphetamine,” Maxwell said. “Meth has been completely overshadowed by opioids.”

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https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/overshadowed-opioids-meth-back-vengeance-n940701

My sister has been battling a losing fight against meth for years now

Absolute destroyer of her life, my parents life and those around her. In and out of rehab many times. Sucks

Same boat

Deal with meth users at work a lot more often than we encounter opioid overdoses. Then again if the opioid users aren't overdosing then it's unlikely we would encounter them unlike the meth users.

It's not the government's job to rehabilitate addicts.  They should be locked away if they can't get control of themselves.

IMHO meth is much worse.  When people do too much opioid based drugs they just lay down and maybe die.  When people do too much meth they usually go crazy and get extremely violent.

But they banned ephedrine, and practically banned pseudoephedrine, there should be no more meth!

By the way, the unelected FDA banned ephedrine for sale, shouldnt that require an actual law?

Think of all the money we will save and lives we will change by putting more people in prison.

"The cost of amphetamine-related hospitalizations had jumped from $436 million in 2003 to nearly $2.2 billion by 2015. Medicaid was the primary payer."

You could build a pretty nice wall with all that cash.

Good ole meth, it’s a classic.

Uh, I mean meth isn't "back" it's been here and been becoming increasingly more widespread/common throughout the country.

Cheap to make so sellers have high profit margins and it's addictive as fuck.

In the last 10 years things like crack have virtually disappeared and been replaced by meth basically.

It'd also probably surprise you the number of "average Joe" people that use or have used meth. It's mind boggling

I am treated like a criminal about to happen when I go to CVS once or twice a year to buy 48 Sudafed.

There should be no more meth with that bullshit system in place if that was the source of meth.

But I guarantee that drums of the shit are coming across the border.

Better than letting them roam free causing crime.  Plus we get license plates out of it.

And who raises the dopeheads kids???
In MANY cases it's the grandparents.
If you ask 10 random people if they know of someone who's raising grandkids because the youngster's parent/ parents are dope addicts I'd wager a case of good beer that AT LEAST 60% will answer in the affirmative

My wife (66 years old ) and myself (73 years old ) are raising our 4 year old granddaughter for that precise reason.......and I suspect there are many,many thousands of folks like us who will do whatever it takes to keep an innocent baby out of foster homes and adoption rackets.

And I don't get it.  There can't be anyone left that doesn't know that meth is horrifically bad.  You would have to literally point a gun at my head to even get me thinking about trying a substance like that.  The irony being that many meth user end up with guns pointed at their heads because they are on meth and committing a crime.

I read an article several weeks ago that said that meth production was occurring in Mexico and being smuggled in via the border because it’s easier to buy the necessary chemicals/ingredients there.

You underestimate the amount of crime a junkie can cause before the law catches on to them!

It's way cheaper to get them clean or treated outside of the criminal justice system. They can make the license plates in rehab, like arts and crafts time.

Denver is setting up a "safe" place to inject drugs, with free needles and medical supervision.  You want more IV drug users?  This is how you get them.

Meth never went anywhere and won't be any time soon. But the vacuum created when the feds cracked down on pills has caused heroin to soar all across the nation.  There is virtually no community that isn't seeing heroin now.

I didnt make the parallel to gun bans strong enough i guess

Sorry man.

Waiting for the freedom/victimless crime/legalization crowd to show up.

These single swinging dicks can't look past their noses to see how these drugs don't just effect the user but a long chain of people..... for just about every user.

In my AO, it has remained the leading drug of choice. Tweakers EVERYWHERE.

I also work in the trucking industry. Lots of it the also.

Jesse must be working OT to pump out all that meth.

The laws have worked so well that abuse skyrocketed even more!!

Worst fucking drug ever.  Very few are able to escape it.

cracking down on pain meds and pill mills did not cure the addicts ,they just use an alternative drug.

The reason there is such a huge meth problem is because there are so many americans who buy it.  We see it as an issue of them(meth users) vs us, (non meth users). But the truth is there are a lot of "them" on our team. Not gun owners exactly, but the plumber at your house, the checker at the grocery store, the nurse at the hospital.

Meth never left. You don't hear about it anymore because the cartels took over supplying the meth and no one cooks it anymore. They're making medical grade crystal in Mexico and distributing through the US. Some areas are harder hit than others, rural areas seem to like meth more than urban. I worked with an officer from Memphis who said meth wasn't very common there at all. It's rampant here in the backwoods.

God damn, the pusher
God damn, I say the pusher
I said God damn, God damn the pusher man
Well, now if I were president of this land
You know, I'd declare total war on the pusher man
I'd cut if he stands,
And I'd shoot him if he'd run
Yes, I'd kill him with my Bible
And my razor and my gun

Steppenwolf 1967

IME users make themselves pretty obvious eventually.
Meth is a death spiral of addiction, homelessness, violence and self destruction.
Based on the people I have seen throw their lives away because of meth, it alters your brain chemistry almost to the point where it makes once a tweeker always a tweeker.
Shit also makes you look like a fucking zombie. My town is infested with fucking tweekers.

Cant' say that I have met a casual tweeker, eventually it becomes your very reason to exist.

You drug warriors and your liberal logic just crack me up.

It's like trying to argue with a liberal about gun control....no matter how many facts are presented, you will respond with same bullshit.

I don't get why any of you are upset....these are your policies causing all of these problems.  This is exactly what you want and exactly what the never ending WoD looks like, has always looked like, and will always look like.

Hopefully we can import some of these Mexican Cartels to the US and get them operating properly here....that would be like a wet dream to you guys, eh?

Think of all the medical expenses (including ambulance crews and ER costs as well as in-hospital care), personal security costs (such as security cameras) and other expenses we could avoid, and think how much more freedom of movement WE would have if we didn't allow drug users to freely roam the streets.

If they were even remotely serious about stopping opioids and meth they would seal the border.  They are not serious, only interested in the cintrol and constitutional end runs the “war on xxxx” gives them.  They lost the public support on pot, so then it’s the opioid crisis...that has turned out to be pretty much bullshit so its on to the next crisis. (Not saying opiod addicts and methheads don't exist but its not the crisis law enforcement wants you to believe to expand their power and budgets)

It's a combo here.

Meth and Heroin...speed balling

Use the meth to get the opioid in to the blood stream faster...think "jaeger bombs"

Stimulant dilates the blood vessels and gets the heart pumping faster to move the H quicker.  Like an energy drink and liquor.

I may be tired and a little off but ....... WTF are you talking about?

We have a stimulant addicted nation. Look at all the energy drinks and over priced Starbucks coffee.  My theory is that this is a direct result of matriarchal, permissive child rearing. Children who never learn mental and self discipline look to external stimulation.  Being raised in a visual, media box environment, versus a literate, book reading environment compounds it. Then if you are a normal boy you get tagged as ADD and prescribed stimulants.

If you spend a day doing mentally or physically challenging work it's not normal to want to get high by taking stimulants.  If you need to take stimulants for focus under normal circumstances, your brain wasn't adequately challenged when young.

Ultimately these behaviors are economically and culturally subsidized.  A good three or four decade global depression will fix thus. At east two generations need to be raised under adversity.

Are you arguing that decriminalizing meth will make the situation better?  That, were it legal, the addicts would disappear?  That people are only interested in meth because of its illicit nature?

Stimulant use never really went away.  Meth use slowed way down for a bit after Sudafed sales were restricted, but cocaine use spiked.  Then meth came back after the Mexicans started producing/importing in bulk, and cocaine use dropped back off.

It's the circle of life in mental health.  Stimulant induced psychosis, clear up after a few days in inpatient, rinse and repeat next week after discharge.

One of my drywall contractors for 20 years is now on meth.
great finisher made great money. Probably 6 figures a year easy.
Just got out of jail for theft or receiving stolen property.
was doing heron now meth. Easier to get or cheaper.

Meth was never an issue in my area, but pretty much everything else was. I knew a lot of junkies and addicts over the years, everything from spoiled kids from wealthy families to homeless crackheads. None of them were making rational decisions when they got hooked. Back in the 80's and 90's, I could see why kids got hooked. They were lied to about drugs by everyone they we're supposed to trust. They were told about gateway drugs and the evils of weed then found out it was all bullshit and all kinds of responsible people smoked. Then they did come and discovered that it isn't some instant addiction and that people did it recreationally all the time. People did acid and didn't have an issue. People did shrooms with no issue. A few pills weren't a problem. Next thing you know, they're trying crack and heroin because everything else they we're warned about was a lie.

Look at how many people here go pants shitting retarded about weed. You think if they have a kid and preach all that bullshit the kid will still believe them about hard drugs? Kids already think they know more than everyone else, then they see proof that their frothing at the mouth anti marijuana dad is completely clueless. Well, if the old man is that delusional about weed, maybe it's the same for Vikes or Oxy. Maybe then those get too expensive due to the crack down but by then it's too late and they trade addictions?

Maybe it doesn't work like that with meth, but I do know that basing drug policy on easy to disprove lies is counterproductive.

Then there are also a lot of people with mental health issues. They're fucked up already, the drug use is a symptom, not the disease.

It isn't people like yourself getting addicted. That's why you don't get it. You're not fucked up from misinformation or mental illness. Hell, I still don't get it and I've watched similar situations play out. You don't go from upper middle class honor student to in house pussy at a crack house for no reason. Watching that shit go down really opens your eyes to how people can miss the signs. And for the record, in that case she got her shit together and is now married with a couple of great kids and a good life. 15-20 years clean.

He is on my ignore for rampant dipshittery.

Im pretty far right but I do think we need to start looking st drugs and homelessness from a monetary standpoint.

It’s cheaper and easier to give these people drugs and a place to use them. Use isn’t going to increase, most people who are on thisnshit don’t want to be, once they are though they can’t get off. This would cut down on property crime, policing, and hospitalization.

Same with homelessness. Give them a place to stay and get cleaned up. It’s cheaper then putting them in jail or moving them along and cleaning up after them constantly.

Yeah I don’t want to have my tax dollars giving these people all this free shit but in places where they have done these programs it works and it saves the tax payers money. I am for saving taxpayer money. Salt Lake City did it with their homeless.

Side note: I would absolutely be behind just putting a bullet in homeless and druggies heads and flopping them in shallow holes but we know that’s not going to happen.

Would not surprise me if they said the cost of the same amount of medical treatment went from 436 million to 2 billion in 3 years.
They keep inflating the price of uninsured treatment  to get the negotiated  price they really want for payment.

This is what I am talking about.

This line of thinking is just absolutely delusional.  It blatantly ignores everything we know about human nature and drugs.

People like to get fucked up.  They always have, they always will.  Nothing you do is going to change that.  Nothing.

This is equatable to a leftist thinking that just a few more gun control laws will somehow magically make criminals not have access to guns anymore.  You are using the exact same logic and reasoning as the anti's.....and no matter how many times it's pointed out to you, just like the leftists you stick your fingers in your ear and scream "lalalalalalalala".

This right here.

The county drug guys went from two meth labs in 5 years, both the same guy, to 6 in the first half of 2018.

It isn't whether or not decriminalization would make addiction disappear, it's what effect would it have? We already have addicts. How much are we spending to unsuccessfully stamp out drug use? Is prohibition causing people to use meth instead of something less dangerous? Once someone is addicted, is the current system making it harder or easier to cleaned up?

Personally, I'm not sure about legalization of stuff like heroin and meth, but I do know what we have now isn't working.

Not to mention how rapid the negative affects are too. Smoking tobacco is bad for you but people don't really see and feel it for decades sometimes so I understand it. But meth use starts physically wreck shit in days to weeks.

Often yeah you'd be right, it's obvious when they become meth monkeys but all I'm saying is the amount of casual or occasional use would surprise you. Not everyone has the same addiction response. Office workers, truckers, HVAC techs to rodeo workers and even some god damn nurses and social workers.

We have already semi decriminalized meth for people with money or good insurance.  Its called Adderall.

Amphetamine and dextroamphetamine salts combined in a single pill.  Bought in bulk, they are $3 to $5 each on the street.

Go to almost any office or college dorm.  A decent percentage of the people will have a script for Adderall.

When the insurance runs out, gets canceled in association with job loss, or the people no longer qualify for their parents' insurance, many move on to crystal meth.

part of the problem is the shit meth they make nowadays. back in the day, it took a lab and someone that kinda knew what they were doing to break down compounds and recombine them to make the good stuff. now they just throw some crap in a pepsi bottle, shake it up, and voila!, sorta meth. that how you get the zombies, rather than the proper tweakers of my day.