When it comes to meth, some say don't believe the hype.
The new frontline in the War on Drugs can't be found in an underground laboratory in Mexico. It isn't cooking in a mobile home bathtub in Clovis. It's sitting next to the laxatives at Walgreens.
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That's because two state laws that went into effect July 1 are upping the ante in New Mexico's assault
on methamphetamine. The laws dramatically increase criminal penalties for meth trafficking and production while expanding the requirements for purchasing products containing pseudoephedrine-a common ingredient in both meth and, say, Advil Cold & Sinus. The dangers of meth, according to State Department of Public Safety Chief Counsel John Wheeler, are very real.
"Meth is what it's hyped to be," Wheeler says. "It's an incredibly insidious, incredibly addictive drug. It's not like heroin, it's not like cocaine, it's not like any drug we've ever seen."
But both the extent of the state's meth problem-and the government's subsequent response-may be significantly exaggerated. An SFR analysis of state and federal statistics indicates that meth is dramatically declining in New Mexico while the abuse of heroin, cocaine and even prescription drugs is far more prevalent.
The findings coincide with recent reports that suggest meth-while posing significant public health and law-enforcement concerns-is far from a catastrophic epidemic. Arguably, the most significant recent study is "The Next Big Thing? Methamphetamine in the United States," a report produced by the non-profit organization The Sentencing Project, which suggests the perceptions about meth use differ wildly from the reality.
"Meth is a bad drug, there's no question about it," says Sentencing Project Executive Director Marc Mauer. "But I think there's a real disconnect about meth among policy makers and the public. The popular imagery has created a mindset that contrasts with what the data actually tells us."
Drug Enforcement Administration statistics show that the number of meth lab busts in New Mexico fell by more than 70 percent between 2003 (194 seizures) and 2005 (59) while the DEA seized more than five times as much cocaine in the state during 2005 as it did meth. And yet the DEA's 2006 National Drug Threat Assessment survey indicated that a majority of state and local agencies perceived meth to be the greatest drug threat.
"Meth may be a problem in New Mexico but, if you just look at the number of users, cocaine is even more of a problem," Mauer says. "It doesn't mean you don't want to address both of them, but you want to address them both in a reasonable way."
Nina Shah, a Drug Abuse Epidemiologist with the New Mexico Department of Health, says that the best available way to gauge the prevalence of drug use is to measure overdose hospitalizations and deaths. According to a May 12 DOH study conducted by Shah, meth was involved in only 2.9 percent of the overdose cases, far below heroin, cocaine and prescription drugs.
"The deaths from methamphetamine in this state are really a very, very small proportion of all drug overdose deaths," Shah says. "But we still need to look at [meth] closely because it's not a passing trend. I think it's here to stay and it's something that needs to be comprehensively addressed by the state."
Shah points out that while the meth overdose death rate is only a fraction of, say, heroin and cocaine, New Mexico meth overdose deaths nearly doubled between 2002 (12 deaths) and 2003 (23 deaths).
"Relatively speaking, it's small," Shah says. "But we still need to be very cognizant of the fact that there has been this increase."
Herman Silva, Gov. Bill Richardson's official drug czar, says that while meth seizures are declining, the state has to remain on the offensive.
"I think that's a good positive thing that we are contributing to the national decrease in meth labs nationwide with our numbers," Silva says. "But although the meth numbers and meth labs are down, we know that it's not going to go away completely."
The first of two new laws-formerly House Bill 211-qualifies pseudoephedrine as a controlled substance akin to heroin and cocaine. The law requires consumers to provide a licensed pharmacist with government-issued identification, sign a sales log recording their purchase and limits their purchases to nine grams of pseudoephedrine within a 30-day period. The law expands on the state's previous requirement that products containing pseudoephedrine be sold from behind the counter and is intended to cut down production of homegrown meth.
"I think that was working to a certain extent," Silva says, "but you still had it available at convenience stores and other areas where you just don't have the checks and balances that you have at a licensed pharmacy."
But a majority of meth in New Mexico comes from across the border. Enter the second law-formerly House Bill 179-which expands the definition of a drug-free school zone to include private and parochial institutions while enhancing the criminal penalties for trafficking, producing and possessing methamphetamine with the intent to sell. The basic sentence for meth trafficking and production will increase from three years to nine years and subsequent convictions will result in a first-degree felony.
"We're targeting the traffickers here, not the users," Silva says. "A majority of our meth is coming in from outside the country. I think enhancing those penalties will be significant in trying to stop the trafficking of meth."
Meth is the Next Bad Thing in a long line of Next Bad Things, according to Reena Szczepanski, director of Drug Policy Alliance New Mexico and a member-along with Shah, Silva and others-of the government's Methamphetamine Working Group.
"We saw the same thing with cocaine and crack in the '70s and '80s," Szczepanski says. "There were alarming increases in the use of those drugs and there was a lot of media and community attention placed on them as a result."
The lessons government should have learned from the rise of crack and cocaine, Szczepanski says, is that increased criminal penalties do little for drug abusers without effective treatment. She hopes that the state can balance the new law-enhancing penalties with treatment options.
"Frankly, I think that getting people into treatment is a more valuable use of our time and resources," Szczepanski says. "We have the lowest treatment availability in the country. We don't give people a shot to break the addiction before they start committing those crimes or before they're caught with drugs in their possession."
Szczepanski is encouraged by the state's appropriation of $2 million for a treatment center in Farmington and roughly $700,000 in recurring funds slated for meth treatment. And she acknowledges that the focus on meth can be a Trojan horse for treating all manner of drug addiction in a state with long-standing issues with cocaine, heroin and now prescription drugs. Nonetheless, without proper treatment options, all the legislation in the world isn't going to win the War on Drugs.
"We need to be aware that this isn't a silver bullet that's going to remove the meth problem in New Mexico," Szczepanski says. "It's one part of the solution to a multitude of issues, but it's not the end-all be-all."
