REGARDING "METHAMPHETAMINE USE RISES IN THE AREA"

Dear Editor,

Regarding the News-Journal's Sept. 24 article "Methamphetamine use rises in
the area", northwestern North Carolina's recent meth lab outbreak is cause
for concern as such facilities present fire, explosion and toxic hazards.
Methamphetamine is rapidly addicting, and prolonged use causes mental and
physical deterioration.

However, the unsupported assertion that "only six percent of people
addicted to methamphetamines recover from the addiction" is dubious.
Compared with the severe distress and prolonged complications of opiate
detoxification, amphetamine withdrawal is mild and transitory. Most addicts
can be treated as outpatients, requiring little more than light sedation
and psychological support. Late relapse is common but implicates
psychosocial circumstances rather than physiologic drug craving. Long-term
treatment results vary but generally much exceed the negligible success
rate claimed earlier. Certainly, no clinical evidence supports dismissing
the option of medically treating methamphetamine addicts. While the matter
is serious, the public should be wary of purposeful alarm and exaggeration
aimed at securing political support and taxpayer funding for a "war on
meth" controlled exclusively by criminal justice authorities.

Such expensive efforts' repeated failures to halt meth labs' decade-long
transcontinental march attests to enforcement's inadequacy as a solitary
anti-drug strategy and calls for reassessment.

Mett Ausley, Jr., MD

Lake Waccamaw