METH STILL DRIVING PEOPLE NUTS

Newsweek, On The Media, And Me

On October 14, I appeared on NPR's On the Media to address press
coverage of the supposed "methamphetamine epidemic" in America. In my
remarks, I laid into a feature that Newsweek ran this summer that
exemplifies what I have long derided as the "new drug of choice story."

Newsweek's editor, Mark Whitaker, wrote to On the Media, chiding the
show for allowing me to cast what he claims were baseless assertions.
On the Media's host Bob Garfield read Whitaker's letter on air during
the October 21 show and effectively apologized for failing to check
out my claims.

Said Garfield: "Newsweek's editor, Mark Whitaker, complained,
properly, that we neglected to verify Gillespie's charge."

But On the Media has nothing to be sorry for-certainly not for airing
a segment that questioned the way illegal drugs are covered by the media.

Whitaker not only mischaracterized what I said on the air, he failed
to respond to serious credibility issues regarding the August 8 Newsweek story.

Indeed, his response to my point of view is representative of a sadly
uncritical media when it comes to implausible claims made in the name
of the war on drugs.

My reply to his attack on my credibility is below:

Newsweek's editor Mark Whitaker was apparently so hopping mad that I
questioned his magazine's August 8 cover story about methamphetamine,
that he didn't bother to listen to what I actually said during my
October 14 appearance on On the Media. Whitaker's reaction is perhaps
understandable: I referred to the Newsweek story on the supposed
methamphetamine "epidemic" (the mag's word) as a "one-stop-shop for,
you know, ludicrous claims" about the use of illegal drugs in this country.

I stand by my statement.

Whitaker claims I said that the Newsweek story "contained no
statistics to substantiate our assertion that it's an epidemic." In
fact, I said his magazine's story "sought to show that there was an
epidemic but...there are no hard numbers in there about usage trends
or anything like that."

The key words, of course, are "usage trends." By Whitaker's own
account, the only usage stats that Newsweek provides are drawn from
the most recent edition of the National Survey on Drug Use and
Health: "More than 12 million Americans have tried methamphetamine
and 1.5 million are regular users, according to federal estimates."

Before I get into a discussion of whether those figures are
particularly useful, any reader-and certainly any journalist-would
first ask: How does one establish a trend about drug use by only
citing a static set of usage statistics? Are those figures on the
rise or the decline?

In any case, the source of Newsweek's figures undercuts any notion
that we're fast becoming a nation of speed freaks. Table 1.1A of the
National Household Survey includes usage rates for 2003 and 2004 (the
latest years for which full data are available). In 2003, 12.3
million Americans aged 12 and older reported having tried
methamphetamine at least once in their lifetime.

In 2004, that figure was 11.7 million. Table 1.1B expresses those
totals as percentages of the American population: They come to 5.2
percent and 4.9 percent, respectively. So the lifetime numbers are
basically flat or falling.

Are there 1.5 million "regular users" of meth? The Household survey
finds that 1.32 million Americans aged 12 and older reported using
meth in the past year in 2003. For 2004, that figure had risen
slightly to 1.44 million.

Expressed as percentages of the population aged 12 and older, those
figures yield an identical 0.6 percent result. And we shouldn't
forget the self-evidently bogus claim that use of meth in the past
year somehow equals "regular use." Are you a regular user of liquor
if you've had one drink in the past year?

The Household survey does provide figures for "past month" use, which
is widely considered a proxy-albeit an imperfect one-for something
like regular use. (It's imperfect because one drink or one snort or
one cigarette a month-the minimum needed to answer in the
affirmative-hardly indicates compulsive or addictive behavior.) So
what about past-month use of meth by Americans aged 12 and older?

In 2003, 607,000 people-or 0.3 percent-copped to using meth. In 2004,
it was 583,000-or 0.2 percent.

Where's the trend here?

In case you're wondering, the percentages for lifetime, past year,
and past month use for the 2002 survey came in as 5.3 percent, 0.7
percent, and 0.3 percent respectively. The methodology of the survey
was changed starting with the 2002 survey so a straight-up comparison
with earlier years is impossible. But past-month use of "stimulants"
(a category that included methamphetamines and other substances)
throughout the 1990s stayed in the same range reported for meth in 2002-2004.

Whitaker also points to Newsweek's use of law enforcement sources to
substantiate the notion of a meth epidemic.

Cops, prosecutors, and other law enforcement officers are of course
important sources, but they have a well-documented history of
exaggeration and aggrandizement when it comes to drug issues; their
claims always need to be verified independently.

Consider, then, one of the main pieces of evidence included in
"America's Most Dangerous Drug": a July telephone survey of "500 law
enforcement agencies in 45 states...by the National Association of
Counties," in which "58 percent said meth is their biggest drug
problem.'" Titled "The Meth Epidemic in America," it is a classic
example of a poorly designed and leading survey, barely masking its
preordained conclusion in every question.

"As you may know," the survey script begins, "methamphetamine use has
risen dramatically in counties across the nation..." More important,
the actual methodology of the survey, including the total number of
calls made (versus actual responses), confidence intervals, and more
are not discussed.

To put it bluntly, this is hardly the sort of independent research
that should be repeated uncritically. Journalists and critical media
consumers can read the report online; I'll leave it to them to decide
if they would uncritically endorse its claims.

The Newsweek story was widely attacked for its hysterical tone and
cliche-ridden content (for examples of critical coverage, see the
work by my colleague Jacob Sullum and by Slate's Jack Shafer. So I
can understand why Whitaker is a bit ragged out by yet one more
dissing of his magazine.

But he goes too far in chiding On the Media for hosting a critical
conversation about coverage of drug use in America. "If your
mission," he writes, "is to monitor the accuracy of what is being
reported in the media, shouldn't you take the time to do some
reporting on what you allow people to say on your show?"

That's a question that Whitaker ought to be directing at himself and his staff.

As I argued during my On the Media appearance, misinformation about
drugs and their effects make it impossible to have serious, mature
discussions about the best public policies related to prohibtion,
treatment, law enforcement, and much more. The Newsweek cover story
on meth sadly reminds us that most coverage of drug use has not
really improved since the
(http://www.snopes.com/horrors/drugs/lsdsun.htm)old tales of
LSD-eating hippies staring into the sun until they went blind filled
the nation's newspapers.

Reason Editor-in-Chief Nick Gillespie is the editor of Choice: The
Best of Reason.