The UK government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs recently recommended that Crystal Meth be upgraded from a Class B to a Class A drug in the UK, with jail sentences up to seven years for possession and life for dealing. This inspired The Times of London to posit the following:
Meth might not yet be a household name in the UK, but it has wreaked havoc in America, and senior police officers caution that it may be mainstream here within two years. British newspapers are already describing it as a “creeping menace” that is “more deadly than crack”. Beyond the fear and media rhetoric, how worried should we be?
Unfortunately, despite its stated intentions, The Times decided it was not going to go very far beyond the rhetoric, distorting the extent of the meth problem in the United States.
While it deploys anecdotal evidence that crystal meth is indeed dangerous for those who use it often enough it doesn’t dig very deeply into the statistical evidence it raises to see how widespread meth addiction actually is:
Meth use in America has exploded since the late 1990s and the scale of the problem is startling. An estimated 12.3 million Americans had tried the drug by 2003…
What it then should have gone on to provide was how many of those who had tried meth continued to use or even abuse it. For this they could have turned to the 2004 National Survey on Drug Use and Health from the (White House’s) Office of National Drug Control Policy. They would have found the following:
* An estimated 11.7 million Americans from the age of 12 and up have tried meth at least once during their lifetimes (4.9% of the total comparative U.S. population). This is close enough to the 12.3 million from The Times.
* An estimated 1.4 million of the same age range said they had tried meth in the past year. This is 0.6% of the total comparative population or 12% of those who have ever tried it.
* An estimated 583,000 of the same age range said they had tried meth in the past month. This is 0.2% of the total comparative population or 5% of those who have ever tried it.
In other words, it is a small minority of those who have ever tried meth who go on to use it regularly, let alone abuse it. While even this small minority might be too much for many, if we are to have a debate about how to address the abuse of crystal meth and a highly respected newspaper that sells over 650,000 copies per day cannot even properly inform its readers of the basics, how can effective solutions ever be proffered?
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