Comments on: Meth in America

By: David

David — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:37:10 +0000

Wow, I’ve never heard an author so bored with his own book!

By: Ellen Dibble

Ellen Dibble — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 14:07:29 +0000

I think Nancy means “the number of people living on some sort of subsidy,” meaning food stamps, Medicaid, Workers’ Comp, public or “affordable” housing, depending on politicians negotiating to keep it available. It is gut-wrenching to me to think of because the teens with parents oriented like that tell me it “isn’t worth it” to become middle class. They look at the way I live and see confirmation of it. “Work your fingers to the bone, what do you get, bony fingers.”
Not only do the kids see no value to escaping the sub-rosa style of life (income has to be beyond the reach of tax collectors or one loses benefits); further the adults are motivated to vote, to the extent they do, for what they see as absolutely necessary public supports.
I see this as a huge threat to a democracy. The wily politicians will be smooshing people to the edges where their votes can be manipulated according to pretty simple formulas. A large voting bloc that can be manipulated like that is surely dangerous to our way of life — never mind the lifestyles (meth for one) that afflict them and us along the way.
What can we do? Well, once the objective was to settle the West. It was tough, and people who could collaborate and work hard did it for us.
If you ask me, now there is a need for international collaboration, with almost a wartime intensity, toward keeping the planet from becoming uninhabitable. The persuaders haven’t been the heavy hitters — the oil companies, for instance — for obvious reasons. And currently what I hear (from a few with large cars and habits of driving) is we are past the tipping point, that this is not a war worth fighting.
I say we can’t just give up. Scientists who have diagnosed the situation need to be refocused on dealing with seas bubbling with methane, and politicians need to be refocused on dealing with the displacements and environmental stressors involved.
Human goals need to be something other than acquiring more, more plastics, more energy-consuming enhancements to lifestyle.
Right now the goals are way way off. Someone should hit Madison Avenue over the head and tell them to get with the program. (What program? Let’s design it.)
We should not be seeking more manufacturing if it adds to our planetary risk.
So what exactly should be people be doing besides various kinds of complaining and escapism?
I am hoping our leaders will offer some answers.

By: Nancy

Nancy — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 18:14:59 +0000

Gosh, this reminds me of Pollock’s book Knockemstiff. What is happening to small town America? I was raised in a small mining town in Northern Minnesota, where my parents and their peers were first generation born from European immigrants. In the 50’s to the 70’s, the town was clean and orderly and there was alot of community pride. Today, the percent of people living on some sort of subsistance is high. There are many kids having kids. Long gone is the pride in the community. The culture has changed for the worse. In addition, there is meth. When I visit family, they are quick to point out where the new meth house is. It is hard to believe how much the community has changed. What can we do?

By: Mark S.

Mark S. — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 20:11:23 +0000

Frankly, the fact that this drug is such a malignant, evil and monstrous substance ruining so many lives, I find emotionally satisfying the notion of making the willful manufacture and sale of meth a capital offense. I know it will never happen, but I would not shed any tears for the horrendous scumbags who deal in this cancer.

By: Ellen Dibble

Ellen Dibble — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 04:29:20 +0000

I was going to wait for some other historian, or some corrections officer, or psychotherapist to weigh in. They might not get a chance before this window fades.
Have you heard the word “draconian”? Have you heard the words “Shariyah law”?
On the other hand, picking cotton is not so draconian, and besides, plenty of people do that anyway. While I was in college, you either did practice teaching or you picked tobacco, hanging off the back of a truck, starting at 5:30 AM. We never thought of that as punishment; it was honest labor.
My understanding is that “drug courts” where people show up to answer to a judge every week or so work a lot better than stiff sentencing.
I will watch out for evidence of other populations that have gone whole turkey — I mean cold turkey — Can we use force to make Americans dour? You suggest we can at least stop the drug use at will. Hmm.

By: Jim Thomas

Jim Thomas — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:58:12 +0000

We have to go with what has proven to work in fighting drug abuse. During the late 1880’s the Chinese government made a simple plan to fight drug abuse..”Quit or we will chop off your head”. People quit. Fast Forward to the early 1980’s and the U.S. Military said “Quit or we will kick you out” Wham..they went from a 70 percent drug abuse problem to less than 1 percent in 5 years. It’s time to forget about chasing “Mr. Big” and go after the casual drug user. Give them a simple choice “give up the drugs or pick cotton”. It will work.

By: Ellen Dibble

Ellen Dibble — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:54:06 +0000

After I posted that the drug use of the daughter “somehow got out ahead of Mom” in a previous post, I thought about anonymouscrab’s interesting posts wherein he (she?) answers the “personal responsibility” caller, and posits huge responsibility on lots of outside factors, things Americans have majority voted for, for a long time.
So I was thinking I should apologize to Mom. There is what another caller called the “boredom” factor, which Joanna has just mentioned too.
I was thinking that the common phrase in courtrooms, when asked “what were you doing?” “We were hanging out.” Not just in courtrooms. I ask you, how many young people, steamed on hormones, not yet tethered to mortgages and families, especially if not worn out by full-time employment — how many are going to effectively loll en masse?
Would TV keep them “out of trouble”? Would computer games keep them tethered to reality? Or would they choose to escape from the lack of structure, lack of responsibility, lack of direction, at least for a time? I think they have too much on-the-go to just loll. Too much on-the-go to be satisfied with anything that appears on a screen, TV or computer. They need to be drugged. I get that.
I think it was a Susan who pointed out the roll of faith and faith communities, of AA for alcoholics. The energies misdirected (squelched?) by drugs can be deployed by “institutions” (she points out are not all bad) in constructive ways.
So I thought of my church. It’s trying to transform. It’s trying to renew.
I think churches satisfy some people’s needs for companionship and direction, but there are plenty of ways someo churches seem to celebrate blindness, to “merely” absorb time in ways that pretend to be far more constructive than they actually are.
Church activities could be as much a distraction as a computer game. Both would be preferable to escapism by addiction, but religion has not cornered the market on best-practices for “hanging out.” My opinion.

By: Joanna Eleftheriou

Joanna Eleftheriou — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:27:53 +0000

Thanks for an incisive discussion. I appreciated your analysis of addiction — that the problem of addiction has always been with us. I also found it helpful that you interrogated the idea that we often take for granted — “boredom is the problem.” What does that mean, and what is it about our culture that has allowed us to have nothing to do with our time. As an educator, I hear the words “bored” and “boredom” all the time, and don’t know what to make of it. Your program helped me keep thinking about “boredom” in ways that reach out my own book-rich, non-bored experience.

By: Ellen Dibble

Ellen Dibble — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:05:19 +0000

“lock up casual drug users”??? The jail/prison population in the U.S. is outrageous anyway, and there was a post in this forum about the difficulty of reintegrating oneself productively in society. Any conviction is a huge setback. So there is the huge, huge cost of imprisonment, the huge, huge cost to the casual users under an overreactive scenario, and thirdly, a huge huge cost to the justice system in prosecuting “casual users,” from the court clerks who advise them, the court officers who maintain order, the lawyers who are mandated to serve them, the judges whose time is spent.
There are good ways to spend time in the judicial system, but Jim’s solution is like beating a dead horse. People just go back to their “using” communities and continue to use — is my impression. A worse punishment may make some more careful, but there is a fair population who think serving time locked up is just the cost of doing business.
Therefore I think legalizing and taxing, and regulating is the answer — wherever possible. If drug users do illegal things, prosecute that.
The ethos that says it’s cool to “use” somehow got ahead of “Mom” up there, who hadn’t seen it coming. So …

By: Jim Thomas

Jim Thomas — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 14:29:30 +0000

We should lock up casual drug users. Let them pick cottong, etc…to work off their fines. That will solve the problem once and for all.

By: Mom

Mom — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 14:24:06 +0000

I am the parent who watched my daughter turn from a gifted student at an ivy university in the midwest to a street person. I thought that I knew a lot about drugs and addiction but I did not know anything about meth. Please keep this topic out in front. There are a lot of families like mine that never saw this coming. It is a public health disaster and it is everywhere.

By: AnonymousCrab

AnonymousCrab — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 02:32:36 +0000

Oh and a quick follow-up to Susan above me, who wrote “this was in Wisconsin well before globalization or immmigration had a negative effect on the local economy. So I don’t buy the author’s argument.” Can you not see that there is a difference in terms of cultural momentum between a handful of kids in your hometown and the pervasive problem that exists all over this country now? There were a handful of Americans who were eating sushi in those days too, before you could buy it premade in grocery stores. The fact that it existed does not say everything that needs to be said.

By: AnonymousCrab

AnonymousCrab — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 02:08:54 +0000

A comment for the “personal responsibility” caller: where is the collective personal responsibility for supporting 8 years of disastrous policy-making? Where is the personal responsibility among people who happily supported policy-making that went against their own economic interests, and who smugly and sanctimoniously cheered “real America” and laughed at the idea of community organizers while supporting an outdated and nonsensical policy of trickle-down economics, which they bought hook, line and sinker from a supposed Texas cowboy who just happened to have degrees from Yale and Harvard? Where is the personal responsibility for being dependent on cheap imported Wal-Mart goods, and for supporting the anti-regulatory and anti-government policies that allowed all your jobs to migrate overseas? Where is the personal responsibility for being delusional enough to feel prosperous because you could suddenly afford to buy more and more and more industrially-processed junk food and cheap imported clothes sewn by child labor? The communities that were discussed in this program overwhelmingly supported disastrous policies that went against their own economic interests, and now they have practically no local industry apart from cooking up this stupid drug and selling it to one another. It is horrible, yes, but it should not be surprising.

By: susan

susan — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 01:06:58 +0000

All I can say is that meth was around in the rural Upper Midwest LONG before immigration became the emotionally charged issue that it is today. I was a high-schooler in the 70s, and it was very easy to get meth. We had kids whom we called meth-heads at our high school. And this was in Wisconsin well before globalization or immmigration had a negative effect on the local economy. So I don’t buy the author’s argument.

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 23:16:09 +0000

Man, I wish this was out for the kindle/iPhone. I’d be reading it tonight.

By: Putney Swope

Putney Swope — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:50:39 +0000

Greg I don’t know if your story is true or not.
Are you aware that you sound like complete _____ (fill in the blank).

Sorry I’m not going to give you the sympathy vote for not having health insurance and problems with depression.

If you really wanted help you could have found it.
Turning to a highly addictive drug was a pretty dumb idea and is what they call self medicating. You don’t know how luck you are that obviously don’t have an addictive personality.

Hope you still have all your teeth and brain cells.

By: Sarah Anderson

Sarah Anderson — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:43:03 +0000

I was in and out of car and may have missed if the following link was explored, but my thoughts were that the mid-west, like America in general, has changed its sense of worship. Communal worship and community building through faith communities of all religions have, for thousands of years, given meaning to existence and provided social outlets for little cash outlay. Not only did religious affiliations provide a moral structure, they provided a sense of meaning to suffering, poverty and other life difficulties, a conduit through which, at its best, people felt the presence of caring and love. The modern emphasis on personal experience combined with the “I don’t believe in institutions” underestimates the enormous impact for social good organized religion had and still has. (It goes without saying, that organized religion also could be condemnatory, narrow-minded and antithetical to the core values found in the religion, but…at its best, it helped folks find deep meaning and structure. The word boredom was used…and I think when one’s life is empty of meaning, it is easy to succumb to addictions which ease the emptiness short-term, but surely mess up the lives long-term. I don’t buy the direct single-line connection to poverty and drugs. I know plenty of poor, very poor, wonderful people who know that their lives are valuable. These folks have nothing, many are also unemployed, yet contribute to the well-being of others. They don’t use drugs. But poverty and the absence of faith is just a catalyst for despair. In my opinion, one missing component in methland is viable faith in Something Good Beyond, and in communal expressions of that faith. And…recovery often entails finding faith…as anyone who has gone through AA successfully can testify, both to the effectiveness of faith…and the AA community-building.

By: Ellen Dibble

Ellen Dibble — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:08:14 +0000

The point at the end of the show about immigration and gangs sits well with me — or badly. What am American views as a losing situation for someone from south of the border is a great promotion plus a sea of opportunity, given the number of Americans seeking the kind of relief that can be finagled into their hands by people who are trying to be under the radar anyway.
The approach of making sure good jobs are available (and an appropriately educated workforce to do them) is such a huge dream. I think it is the dream Obama is referring to now in something I read; he was speaking of daring to dream of something better. I deduce: Not a bigger house, a bigger mightier car, not the buy-it-now “stuff” and “gizmos,” but meaningful work, meaningful communities. Solid life.
Where to start? Who to kick-start each step? Laws, chambers of commerce, etc., etc. My foot is on the imaginary accelerator; I imagine myself a teenage driver in training, with my mother in the passenger seat, her foot firmly planted on the imaginary brake, saying, “Watch out, watch out, this is too fast, much too fast.”

By: Peter J. Jensen

Peter J. Jensen — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:52:25 +0000

I’m concerned your success is more like squeezing a balloon – it sounds like you’ve done a very good job at cleaning up your town – but where will it pop up next?

By: Greg

Greg — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:46:29 +0000

Another hidden cost of this problem is the wake of human destruction that the CRIMINAL JUSTICE system leaves behind it. The long arm of Texas law (Deputy Ybarra) strongarmed me into a felony conviction; my first arrest/offense ever in my life and their law prevented the judge from offering me something that would allow me to avoid the felony. (The situation for a first time offender would have been different in most other states, and in fact was different in Texas only a year before this officer went on his fishing expedition.)

Now consider that a felony conviction will likely prevent you from working at any large company. I managed to get in under the radar before my conviction was finalized/added to the BCI database. But I have absolutely found that a felony is a lifetime sentence of diminished opportunity. Tom, you should do a show about that!