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Meet little Mary Jones. She's 13 years old. And she's a meth addict. Crystal methamphetamine -- known as "ice" or "crank" on the dark streets where dealers peddle death to kids -- is a drug unlike any other. The pleasure it delivers is indescribable, say experts. But so is the hell that follows. "This stuff can hook you on the first try," warns police detective Bill Mustachio. Addicts become little more than animals hunting for the next fix of a drug that rots their minds and, ultimately, steals their lives. "It started in the west but now it's sweeping the country," Mr. Mustachio says. "It doesn't matter where you live. It's coming." Little Mary is one of the lucky few. She escaped meth's icy grip a year ago. But still, she hears the drug's siren song, calling out to her sweet suburban home, calling her back to the filthy streets where she sold her innocence for one more hit of the stuff. "Every day is a struggle," she says before scampering off to play hopscotch with the neighbourhood girls. This story should sound familiar. Chances are you've read it in a newspaper or magazine. Maybe you saw it on TV. Filled with tragic tales, lurid language and warnings that things will soon get much worse, it has been a staple of Canadian journalism for several years. We didn't invent it, though. We imported it from the United States, where the same story became commonplace in the late 1990s and where it remains a standard of American journalism. You'll notice that I am describing these stories as a media phenomenon, not as a reflection of reality. That's because there's very little reality in them. Like all the media-driven drug scares that came before it -- from the crack panic of the late 1980s to the reefer madness of the 1930s -- the hysterical reports of a "meth epidemic" tell us much more about the media's failings than they do about drugs. Consider the basic claim that meth is racing across the land as more and more people use it. It's the foundation of all these stories. Some say it explicitly. Others imply it with a lock-up-your-children tone. But what evidence do they produce to support this picture? Sometimes there isn't any evidence other than a few sad portraits of addicts. More often, there is the testimony of police officers, politicians and drug counsellors, which can be meaningful when it is limited to their own personal experience. But it typically isn't. Instead, we get sweeping claims that cover the whole state, province or nation. "It's right across the country now," Scott Rintoul, a British Columbia-based RCMP officer told CBC's The Fifth Estate. "It's not all of a sudden, you know, Toronto and Montreal and the East Coast it's going to hit them 10 years from now. It's there now. It may not be at the same level as here but it is definitely moving from west to east." On what evidence was Mr. Rintoul's opinion based? He didn't say. And the reporter didn't ask. She simply took it as fact. She even introduced her story by saying meth is "spreading across the country with the speed of a prairie wildfire." Unfortunately, that's typical. Reporters like to see themselves as skeptics but when it comes to the police, far too many are as wide-eyed as toddlers and their reporting is little more than stenography. Another form of evidence that appears in some of the better meth-scare stories is police data. We're told that the police are seizing more meth, or shutting more labs, or charging more people. And this, we are to assume, proves the meth market is growing rapidly. But that's wrong. The simple rule about drug numbers is that police find more when they look more -- and they look more when everyone's worked up about some new drug "epidemic." A better way to measure whether more people are using meth is simply to ask them. Drug-use surveys aren't perfect, but they are fairly reliable and they have been conducted many times over the years, north and south of the border. Oddly, these surveys are very rarely cited in meth stories. When they are, only one set of numbers gets mentioned: According to the U.S. government's surveys, the number of Americans who said they had ever used meth, even once, in their lives doubled between 1994 and 1999, from below five million to 9.4 million. In 2004, the total was 12 million, or four per cent of all Americans. That certainly shows an increase. Coupled with tales of wasted lives and police claims that meth is "instantly addictive" and capable of destroying whole communities, it looks troubling. But what the media never report is that most people who try meth do not go on to become regular users, let alone addicts. In 1999, only 4.6 per cent of Americans who said they had used the drug at least once in their lives said they had used it in the last month. In 2004, that number was five per cent. In fact, the 1999 "National Survey on Drug Use and Health" -- conducted by a department of the U.S. federal government -- found that just 0.2 per cent of Americans aged 12 or older had used meth in the month prior to the survey. In 2004, the total was exactly the same -- 0.2 per cent. So while there has been an increase over the last decade in the number of people who tried the drug once or twice, there's been no change in the number of regular users: Meth use remains very, very rare. In August 2005, a Newsweek cover story called crystal meth an "epidemic" and a "plague." Needless to say, it did not include any of this statistical information. (For a more detailed look at the meth scare in the U.S., see a superb new report called "The Next Big Thing? Methamphetamine In The United States (PDF Format)" Published by The Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C., think-tank, it can be found at www.sentencingproject.org .) Canadian drug data are patchier but it's clear the situation is similar here. According to the 2004 Canadian Addiction Survey, 6.4 per cent of Canadians said they had used amphetamines of any kind (including meth, but also less-dangerous pills like the "mother's little helper" the Rolling Stones sang about 40 years ago) at least once in their lives. Use of an amphetamine in the previous 12 months was "less than one per cent" -- meaning the number was too small to measure precisely, which hardly fits the definition of a rampant drug craze. Even more telling is a 2004 survey of drug use by students in Toronto that found that one per cent had ever used meth. That was down from three per cent in 1993. The damage done by exaggerated or false reporting about drugs comes in many forms, not the least of which is the loss of credibility suffered by the media and authorities when teens see friends get high without turning into addicts or zombies. Why wouldn't they think that everything adults tell them about drugs is crap? It's a reasonable conclusion, but a tragic one, because meth really is a toxic and potentially lethal drug. It may not be the slouching beast portrayed in the media, but it is dangerous. And there really are "little Marys" out there, rare as they may be. Teens need to hear this from informed sources they trust -- which is precisely what the media won't be if we keep trafficking in moralistic, hyperbolic, inaccurate stories about drugs. |
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We are careful not to duplicate the efforts of other organizations, and as a grassroots coalition of prisoners and social reformers, our resources (time and money) are limited. The vast expertise and scope of the various drug reform organizations will enable you to stay informed on the ever-changing, many-faceted aspects of the movement. Our colleagues in reform also give the latest drug war news. Please check their websites often. |
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