Of the 52 overdoses related to methamphetamine in New Hampshire in 2019, 46 included some opioid. In the United States, methamphetamine samples sent by agents for forensic analysis — another proxy of overall prevalence — represent about one quarter of all samples and went up 75 percent between the years 2014 and 2019, the DEA reported in its most recent threat assessment. RAND estimated there were just over two million cocaine users in 2016, down from nearly four million in 2006. And its survey spouses of alcoholics support groups tallied over two million heroin users, up about 30 percent since 2006, but still far below the number of methamphetamine users. Exact figures on drug use are difficult to obtain, experts say, since surveys of consumers belie the use of stigmatized drugs like methamphetamine. He’d lived through a spike in cocaine trafficking in Miami in the early 2000s and the dramatic rise in heroin and fentanyl use in New England in more recent years — the one that had left thousands dead because of overdoses.
- Potency refers to the dosage needed to affect a person, while purity is the amount of drug in a given sample.
- “They’ve [the Liberal government] done very little; they promised before the last election that they were going to have, in their words, a war on drugs,” Shadow Minister Picton said.
- In many countries, there is not a clear designation between methamphetamine use/abuse and the use/abuse of other amphetamines like cocaine.
- Methamphetamine is a potent central nervous system stimulant drug that was developed in Japan and initially used to treat lethargy.
Dawsey began her career in substance prevention in the mid-2000s, when meth busts soared in rural areas of Missouri. Looking back on that era, Dawsey acknowledged that the state’s status as a “meth capital” drew needed attention, and funding, to the problem. On Thursday’s St. Louis on the Air, Weeks explored Missouri’s important role in the spread of meth, including how chemists turned to cough medicine as a key ingredient.
It is estimated that approximately six percent of people in the United States use illegal drugs. Several other countries, including Greenland, the United Kingdom, and Mongolia, have rates of illegal drug use over five percent. The deception plays a role in skyrocketing use of the drug, as well as startling number of overdoses it causes. In 2019, the last year for which there is data, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) chronicled 16,167 methamphetamine overdose deaths — up from the 3,627 overdoses related to the drug in 2013.
Two Australian businessmen bought a casino in a tropical paradise — only to shut it down
Mexican drug trafficking groups are sourcing largely industrial grade precursors from China or India and working in mega-labs or clandestine labs that allow them to produce much better product,” Pardo told InSight Crime. To address the meth crisis, law enforcement, and other agencies have implemented various strategies. Reports show that meth-related arrests, overdose deaths, and hospitalizations have grown significantly in recent years.
People who use methamphetamine can face risks, including stimulant overdose or overamping. Learn more about how drug decriminalization and investing in health, harm reduction services, overdose prevention centers, and safer supply can keep people safer. Medicinal forms of methamphetamine are not abused as often as illicitly produced forms of methamphetamine (crystal meth or glass). Continued efforts to crack down on the illicit production of methamphetamine aim to limit its availability and its abuse worldwide. Amphetamine-type stimulants, including methamphetamine, are major drugs of abuse in East Asia and Southeast Asia. One of the most widely used methods of quantifying drug use is to express it in Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs), which represent the number of healthy years of life lost to the use of illicit drugs, averaged across the country’s entire population.
Healthcare providers use motivational interviewing, harm reduction techniques, and collaboration with addiction medicine specialists to support people with addiction. A soldier going to battle on Pervitin usually found himself unable to perform effectively for the next day or two. Suffering from a drug hangover and looking more like a zombie than a great warrior, he had to recover from the side effects. Methamphetamine belongs to the substituted phenethylamine and substituted amphetamine chemical classes. It is related to the other dimethylphenethylamines as a positional isomer of these compounds, which share the common chemical formula C10H15N.
The results were sampled from 13million Australians and compared from December, 2021 to February this year before being analysed by the national wastewater drug monitoring program. All of this creates additional public health challenges, particularly in rural communities. Probing the show-biz angle, Variety declared the entire California desert as capital in 2004.
It’s also unclear where these groups are getting the chemicals to make P2P. The most recent seizure data from 2018 from the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) cited China as the source of some of the largest recent seizures of precursors, and Mexico as the place where the largest seizures took place. The DEA’s 2020 Drug Threat Assessment also cited China and India as sources for precursors, but counterdrug officials contacted by InSight Crime said the chemicals were coming from many other places as well, including Germany. These organizations have also diversified their precursor chemical use, shifting among suppliers and chemicals to keep authorities off balance. The criminal groups produce most of the methamphetamine using what is known as phenyl-2-propanone, or P2P. There are two main methods to produce P2P, and the criminal groups have oscillated between them, investigators say.
Australia is now officially the meth capital of the world – as the city with the most users is revealed
This would qualify as one of the highest rates of meth abuse in the entire world. Although figures for the entire continent are hard to come by, Cape Town in South Africa was once a regional site for methamphetamine production and trafficking. Methamphetamine was also present in the wastewater of several other countries, including Cyprus, Finland, East Germany, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden, Spain, and Switzerland. “As these restrictions were gradually relaxed, and this was the case in most jurisdictions during the review period, then consumption of drugs increased, particularly for stimulants.” “Organised crime groups have redoubled their efforts to supply the major illicit drug markets as COVID-19 restrictions eased, generating significant illicit revenue, but they continue to face challenges, not least from law enforcement agencies,” Mr Phelan said. For the first time since 2017, the use of methylamphetamine, cocaine and MDMA in Australian capital cities outstripped regional areas.
She cautioned, however, that the focus on meth likely pulled attention from other drugs that were on the rise at the time, including heroin and opioids. Mr Neilson said regional NSW has highest per capita consumption because they are part of key drug supply routes. ACIC principal advisor for drugs, Shane Neilson, said the Australian illicit drug market was supplied by both international imports and domestic manufacturing. Perth is the new meth capital of Australia while regional New South Wales has the most meth use among rural Australia.
Long considered a drug mostly used in poorer backwaters, methamphetamine availability and use has exploded in the United States in the last few years in places where it had never been consumed in any large amounts, marking a dramatic shift. In this, the first in a three-part series (read chapters two and three) on changing drug consumption patterns in the region and its impact on criminal dynamics, InSight Crime explores how methamphetamine became the drug of choice in the United States. In many countries, methamphetamine is the primary synthetic drug of abuse. In some areas, like parts of Europe (Czech Republic), Australia, Asia, and the United States, methamphetamine is a significant drug of abuse. A recent article in Time reported that more than 7 percent of adults in Australia (more than 1.3 million Australians) have reported they have tried meth, with about 400,000 adults reporting using meth within the month before the survey.
Methamphetamine is primarily produced in Europe in the Czech Republic. It may also be produced in some other countries like https://rehabliving.net/ the Netherlands, Lithuania, and Bulgaria. Nonetheless, globally, methamphetamine use and abuse appear to be on the rise.
Which Areas Are Considered the Meth Capitals of the US?
Submit the search terms “methamphetamine capital of the world” or “meth capital of the world” into Nexis, and it spits back almost 70 citations between 1983 and 2005, with many writers and sources disputing the capital’s precise GPS coordinates. The program is open to anyone who has become dependent on methamphetamine and has not used for three weeks. To determine eligibility to be accepted into the program, participants must undergo an assessment and must meet the DSM5 criteria for severe stimulant use disorder in the past three years; this is because they only have a limited number of staff and funding. Some people may even be introduced to the drug without even realising it – ecstasy pills are commonly ‘cut’ with methamphetamine (according to eClipse).
Death from overdose
OxyContin was already taking a toll on local communities, and there was little national concern because it was seen as an isolated regional problem (the derogatory term “hillbilly heroin” was getting thrown around a lot at the time). Rural America has long suffered from an epidemic of methamphetamine use, which accounts for thousands of drug overdoses and deaths every year. Incorporating group therapy, individual sessions with psychologists and trained substance abuse counsellors, and 12-step programs, PsychMed calls the Matrix Program “the gold standard therapeutic approach for methamphetamine dependence”. The Shadow Minister did, however, completely rule out adopting any sort of legislation like the US state of Oregon, or Portugal, where hard drugs have been decriminalised. South Africa, especially Cape Town, may have a very high prevalence of methamphetamine users.