Speed Kills
for release 08-01-05
Washington D.C.
The first time I took speed I was seventeen years old. I threw a paper route that required me to get up at four AM. One night I was partying with some friends and when I said that I had to go home at midnight so that I could throw my route, a friend said to me, "Here, try this." and he handed me a capsule. It was a methamphetamine diet pill.
It usually took me two hours to throw my paper route. That morning I did it in forty-five minutes and wrote two songs along the way. Plus I felt like I was ten feet tall and wearing a bulletproof vest. I thought I could do anything. This fit quite well with my native adolescent megalomania.
I stayed awake for five days. What can I say? I was young and stupid and had no idea that taking speed was much like borrowing money at a high interest rate. You pay dearly on the back side for the front-end benefits. There is nothing quite as miserable as a speed crash. You feel even more wretched and weak on the downside than you felt euphoric and invincible on the upside. It's the classic Devil's Bargain. You get what you want right now, energy, enthusiasm, confidence, stamina; but the payback is Hell.
Now we are told that there is anew epidemic of meth abuse. Where have these people been for the last sixty years? We passed it out to our service men and defense plant workers during the second World War. It was available over the counter until 1959 and legal by prescription until the early '70's. When diet pills were banned in the US, I knew that there would be a healthy black market for the substance. Truck drivers liked it and factory workers and titty dancers and college students who were cramming for exams. So, I began investigating ways to synthesize this product. I knew it would be in great demand.
In those days anybody with a first year college chemistry background could manufacture meth. The chemicals were available and the process was simple. In two days you could cook enough meth to make fifty to a hundred thousand dollars. Now it's even simpler. Even a home economics major can score a few boxes of cold pills containing psuedoephedrine and cook up a batch of meth almost as easily as they could make a batch of chocolate chip cookies. You can find the recipe on the on the internet.
If we were talking about politics instead of meth abuse, we would call it a grassroots movement. Thousands of meth labs are springing up all across the heartland to satisfy the demand for the substance. The people want their stimulants just like they want their marijuana. Where there is a demand, there will be a supply. It's simple economics.
The problem that arises here is similar to the situation of illegal abortion. When abortion was illegal, those wanting an abortion had to be subjected to risky, unsanitary and medically unsafe conditions. The coat hanger stories come to mind. People who want meth have to deal with unsavory characters, late nights and back alleys to obtain a product that was produced by an amateur chemist and contains god knows what residues and by-products. When whisky was illegal people went blind from drinking moonshine that had been distilled in car radiators with lead solder in the tubes.
When you make an industry illegal, you also relinquish the possibility of regulating it for purposes of safety and quality control.
The Poet's Eye sees the simple solution. Make drugs of all sorts legal and readily available to all who want them. If you are stupid enough to destroy yourself with cocaine or speed or heroin, that should be your choice. It's a matter of Body Sovereignty. If your teeth fall out or if you kill yourself with an overdose, good riddance. But to spend millions of dollars to finance a drug militia that does nothing but aggravate the problem and in the process violates the rights and freedoms of our citizens makes absolutely no sense.
I told her crystal clear
"I don't mind you getting high
But there's one thing you should fear"
"Your mind might think its flying, baby
On those little pills
But you ought to know it's dying, 'cause
Speed kills"
--Amphetamine Annie, Canned Heat c.1967
