METH AND POVERTY

There is nothing more full of stress and anxiety than being poor. Nothing
contributes to fear of facing the world and coping with life more than
abject poverty. Poverty creates "social addicts." Oklahoma is famous for
the home manufacture of "bathtub meth " in which poisons are concocted into
a deadly product for sale to the poor and depressed. Meth is the
counterpart of the "bathtub gin" of the '20s and '30s . Both are products
of the deadly combination of prohibition and poverty. But the poison works
to release a shower of neurotransmitters in the brain causing transient
euphoria followed by depression in a downward spiral to addiction and death.

Poverty is an environmental and social disease mindlessly conferring the
disease of addiction. Addiction in a poor community becomes a community
problem. The destructive mindset of the public, police and politicians is
that escape from the stress of poverty through meth is "criminal." Such
"criminals" are mislabeled. With the billions wasted on enforcement and
incarceration their condition could be improved. The root causes of their
plight are economic inequity, corporate addiction to wealth at the expense
of the well being of the nation. Sociopathic addiction to wealth keeps some
of us abjectly poor.

Ron du Bois

Stillwater