Record number of meth users died in San Diego County last year

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/sd-me-meth-stats-20171212-story.html

More than a decade after a full-scale assault on methamphetamine production in San Diego County, the drug is continuing to ravage the region, killing a record number of users last year and hooking more than half of adults who end up in jail, according to a report released this week by the county’s Methamphetamine Strike Force.

The drug was linked to 377 deaths last year in the county — 66 more than the previous year.

“The trend line is very alarming and continues to head in the wrong direction,” county Supervisor Dianne Jacob said in a statement.

Rather than the sudden overdoses often seen with the opioid epidemic, meth is typically a slow killer.

Many of the people dying are middle-aged, long-term addicts who’ve developed other health complications, said Nick Macchione, director of the county Health and Human Services Agency.

Even though meth isn’t cooked in home labs here anymore — largely a result of laws that restrict access to precursor chemicals — the data show addicts are having little trouble accessing it.

The drug is now produced in mass quantities in cartel “superlabs” in Mexico and smuggled across the Southwest border — particularly in San Diego County, where a significant portion hits local streets before the rest moves on to other parts of the country.

Last year, 47 percent of all meth seizures along the border were in the county, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Plus, San Diego meth is cheap — $250 to $450 an ounce last year compared to as much as $600 an ounce in 2015 — and incredibly pure. Nationwide, average purity levels last year tested above 90 percent per gram, according to the DEA.

The high purity and low cost indicate an oversupply in Mexico.

The drug cartels have also been able to adapt to stricter restrictions on precursor chemicals traditionally needed to make meth — first in the U.S. and now in China — by coming up with new techniques and formulations, according to the DEA.

The report also draws a strong link between methamphetamine and crime, showing 56 percent of adult arrestees booked into county jails tested positive for the drug last year. That’s compared to 49 percent in 2015.

The trend continued on a much smaller scale for juvenile arrestees — with 14 percent testing positive compared to 8 percent the previous year.

Both felony and misdemeanor arrests and citations for selling or possessing meth are also up, from 6,849 to 8,428 last year.

Another trend has emerged: Meth is involved in 20 percent of adult abuse cases reported to Adult Protective Services — mostly meth-using adult children victimizing their parents, according to the report.

Meth’s troubling trajectory in the region comes as attention has drifted to battling the nationwide opioid and prescription drug crisis. The Strike Force report stresses that more is needed to bring the meth story back into focus.

That wasn’t hard to do back in the mid-90s, when the Strike Force was established at a time San Diego was unofficially dubbed the “Meth Capital of the World.” But the county might now be fatigued on the issue, after hearing about it for so many years, Angela Goldberg, who works as the group’s facilitator, said in an interview earlier this year.

Besides greater public awareness, the Strike Force urges greater drug screening in older adults, wrap around treatment services to get addicts and their families into recovery, and continued use of intervention courts to treat underlying problems.

“Sending addicts to jail or prison without addressing their addiction problems does not solve the drug problem in our community,” District Attorney Summer Stephan said in a statement.

Have you noticed that the DEA is really not too interested in going after meth distribution… you see there is a legal prescription meth (DESOXYN) and it is indicated for ADD/ADHD.. and very few prescribers use it.. SO… there are very few prescribers that the DEA has to build a fake case against to seize their assets using Civil Asset Forfeiture Law.. since all the people ODing on meth is being imported from Mexico and ILLEGAL.. Just like most everything else… just have to follow the MONEY TRAIL

Filed under: General Problems