Methamphetamine in Oregon

Methamphetamine in Oregon

Just about, anyone who lives here in Oregon can tell you, Methamphetamine has become a major problem in our state. Most of us know someone whose life has been affected by the drug, and all of us can see the theft that goes hand in hand with meth addicts. Some neighbor-hoods even have signs up proclaiming "Meth Watch" instead of "Neighborhood Watch". This issue affects all of us, and it is my opinion that we can do more to reduce meth use in our state. We still have a big problem here and it needs out attention. Oregon has been particularly hard hit by Methamphetamine. In 2004, Oregon became the second state to pull pseudoephedrine from retail shelves and put it behind the counter. The stories of what happens to Methamphetamine addicts are all around us, on the local news, and in our papers. One story I watched on the local news a few years back. A mother brought her baby to the emergency room. The baby had been crying inconsolably. The doctor there discovered that the mother was a heavy daily Meth-amphetamine user who had been awake for more than a week, and had been breast feeding the baby. As you can imagine they took the child from the mother. When I saw this news story, I remember saying to my boyfriend "Quiet, listen, they are going to say this happened in Salem, Oregon." Sure enough, it was sad but true. I grew up in Salem and I know how Methampheta-mine destroys the lives of users. It was all around me growing up, incredibly available to every-one and myself I beginning in middle school. There was a high rate of meth use, teenage preg-nancies, dropouts, and trouble with the law. The way this drug has affected women and children just breaks my heart. If I had the money, I would start my own not for profit organization dedi-cated to help women in Oregon overcome Meth use. After all that I have seen growing up in Sa-lem, it has made me wonder where Methamphetamine came from, and why it is so bad here. I remember hearing someone say that Hitler invented Meth. Could this be true?

Did Adolf Hitler really create Methamphetamine to give to his troops? Considering how evil I believe meth and Hitler to be, this would not surprise me. However, my research says no, he did not. There is a connection between Hitler and Meth though, during the last three years of his life, 1942 - 1945, he received daily IV injections of Methamphetamine by his doctor, Theodor Morell. This was supposedly treatment for his depression and fatigue, though some historians have speculated that he had Parkinson's disease. However, it is unknown if he did have Par-kinson's, or if he just had Parkinson like symptoms due to abuse of Methamphetamines. The German military dispensed Methamphetamine in pill form, named Pervitin, and in laced choco-late, known as flyers chocolate.

So where did meth come from? In 1893, Methamphetamine or crystal meth was first de-veloped from ephedrine by a chemist the named Nagayoshi Nagai. It was not until 1919, that Akira Ogata turned Methamphetamine into crystallized form. Ogata was able to do this by re-duction of ephedrine using iodine and red phosphorous. During 1945-1950s Post-war, Japan ex-perienced the first meth epidemic. It spread to Guam, the U.S. Marshall Islands and to the U.S. West Coast. In the 1960's Amphetamine, popularly known as speed or uppers, was used. In 1980, am¬pheta¬mine's key chemical, Phenyl-2-propanone, was put under federal control. Howev-er, cooks making the drug for West Coast motorcycle gangs discovered that ephedrine; an ingre-dient found in over-the-counter cold remedies produces Methamphetamine, better known as crystal meth, which is twice as potent. Unlike other hard drugs such as cocaine and heroin, crys-tal meth is made from household products. The only essential ingredient is ephedrine, or its cousin, pseudoephedrine, also found in many cold medicines. Mexican drug runners began sup-plying ephedrine to the biker gangs' cooks. After that, other people started manufacturing the drug on their own at clandestine labs in rural areas. In 2001, Oregon had the fifth highest num-ber of meth lab seizures in the country. 5-7 pounds of chemical waste is produced for each pound of Methamphetamine. By 2004, we hit our peak amount of these labs. As far as I can tell, this is how Methamphetamine came to Oregon.

The Oregon State Police say, "The community needs to be educated as to the signs of both the Methamphetamine process and the behavioral characteristics of those using the drug. Residents should also be aware that with an increase in the usage of meth, there would be a cor-responding increase in property crimes as users look for the means to support their habits." Methamphetamine is tied to most property and identity theft crimes in Oregon and as we know, meth labs blow up all the time causing property damage and fire. (Oregon.gov)

For a decade, Oregon has led the nation in Methamphetamine-treatment admissions per 100,000 people; treatment admissions for meth are second only to those for alcohol. This drug is dangerous because its use can lead to negative consequences such as paranoia and depression, aggression and violence, psychosis, trouble grasping abstract concepts, and severe dental prob-lems. A neuroimaging study showed recovery in some brain regions following prolonged absti-nence (2 years, but not 6 months). This was associated with improved performance on motor and verbal memory tests. However, function in other brain regions did not display recovery even af¬ter 2 years of abstinence, indicating that some Methamphetamine-induced changes are very long lasting. There is an amazing example of what happens to people from using meth at this is "faces of meth", by the Multnomah County Sheriff's department. On their website, they have pictures of people when they first begin using and throughout their progressive addiction. It is just unbelievable how much their appearances change. Though ephedrine and pseudoephedrine have been put behind the counter, Methamphetamine-related deaths in Oregon jumped 22 per¬cent in 2010, claiming 106 lives -- the most in a single year over the last decade, according to statistics compiled by the state medical examiner. This is something we need to get under con¬trol. Ore-gon families are still losing their loved ones to meth use. Many teenagers become Meth addicts before their 18th birthday. A great many of those who use meth never come back to real¬ity, they end up living on the streets and in prisons and mental institutions. Methamphetamine does not just affect the user. Meth affects the children living in our state in a big way.

In one Oregon county, over 800 or 90% of the children in state care are the direct result of family drug abuse, in which the primary