Word: meth
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There it is again: the Marijuana Exception...the Reefer Loophole. All the idiots who drank Canadian Club and Heineken for breakfast, or wrecked themselves on smack or meth--they know they done wrong. But "merely" smoking pot? Well...
...Meth does not require huge, heavily guarded growing fields or sophisticated equipment. It can be cooked up by amateurs with a few simple chemicals in makeshift labs hidden away in cheap motels, mobile homes or isolated farms and ranches. Just $4,000 in raw ingredients converts to 8 lbs. of meth worth $50,000 wholesale...
Most of the labs are sophisticated operations producing pounds of meth for distribution, usually safely. Alarmingly, however, more and more users are setting up dangerous "stove-top" labs to brew a few ounces of methamphetamine for their own needs. In untrained or careless hands, the chemicals are a volatile stew that can explode if spilled onto a hot plate. Officials suspect that's what happened to Kathy James, who has not yet been charged and is now in a burn ward in San Bernardino...
...they fear that such calamities will keep happening because the meth epidemic has gone largely ignored. "We've been fighting it really strongly for nearly seven years," says Edward Synicky, a special agent with California's bureau of narcotics enforcement, "but cocaine gets all the publicity because it's glamorous. And law enforcement in general doesn't put the resources into meth that it should...
More public education is needed about the drug's ruinous effects, which include hallucinations, addiction, depression, paranoia and violent rages. Police report that many of the most brutal crimes are now committed by people using meth. "Maybe the legacy of the three James children can wake up the country to the danger of methamphetamine," says Synicky. "I sure hope...