From Newsgroup: rec.arts.tv
zendejo wrote:
On 5/17/26 3:16 PM, Kurt (Sphincter) Schlichter wrote:
Donald Trump exhibting 'four signs' of dementia
This after we barely survived four years of Biden's admitted senile
dementia and a nation run by Susan Rice and Neera Tanden's autopen?
Your fake concern is fake,
Get off the junk man. It's killing you. The first Trump administration passed out speed pills to White House employees like they were candies.
God knows what Trump injects so he can stand alone on his own two feet, but the way he slurs words, forgets everything and flies into a rage over
simple issues shows that he's abusing some heavy shit.
How Methamphetamine is Assaulting AmericaAs Heartland (Again)
Fentanyl isnAt the only serious threat on the illicit market.
Methamphetamine is back, and itAs taking lives right alongside fentanyl. Midwest town
No sooner had Americans begun to wrap their wits around the epidemic of
opioid abuse than methamphetamine problems began once again to invade AmericaAs heartland. The heartland of this country is made up of states
that are vastly more rural than they are urban, states like Arkansas,
Indiana, Oklahoma, Nebraska, North Dakota and Kansas. Many of these states
are also called oflyover stateso as people flying from one coast to the
other seldom give them a thought.
But there are millions of honest, hardworking families in those states and they are being assaulted by a severe methamphetamine problem. Again.
Looking back in history, methamphetamineAs attack on these salt-of-the-
earth families started in the 1980s.
The First Methamphetamine Assault on the Heartland
Rural meth labs run by outlaw motorcycle gangs were the first assault on
our quiet countrysides. A 1991 report on gangs noted that the narcotics
trade was the main source of income for these gangs. In California in the early 1980s, the gangs were mostly dealing with methamphetamine. Elsewhere, the gangs were distributing cocaine and amphetamines.1
Up and down the West Coast there were rural pockets of methamphetamine manufacture. It was important to manufacture this drug in a remote area because of the stink involved in cooling the drug. In 1989, 98% of all drug labs seized on the West Coast were meth labs. Meth manufacture and distribution then spread across the country, with large seizures occurring
in Las Vegas, Nebraska, Georgia, Indiana, Tennessee, Florida, New York and other states.2
The Second Assault: Central California and Transnational Gangs
Clandestine lab, busted
By 2001, Department of Justice reports on methamphetamine production and trafficking focused on criminal organizations utilizing farm properties in Central California for their labs. Meth cooks crossing the border from
Mexico situated their superlabs in the remote Eastern District of
California. Reports on arrests and lab seizures often mentioned Kern and Tulare Counties.
Large mobile labs made seizures difficult as they would move from one place
to another, but still, there were more than 2,000 clandestine labs seized
in 1999. These labs utilized precursor chemicals that were illicitly
obtained or pseudoephedrine tablets smuggled in from the Middle East.3
The migration of this industry continued to move into the center of the country. By 2003, however, there were more meth labs seized in the Midwest than in any other region in the U.S.4
The Third Assault: Shake and Bake
Police crime scene
Photo by Gino Santa Maria/Shutterstock.com
In 2006, the pseudoephedrine needed to make this drug in volume became
largely unavailable when laws on the sale of cold medication and precursor chemicals tightened up. This shift drove some manufacturing south across
the border. It also spawned a new method of cooking meth: the Shake and
Bake method that utilized two-liter plastic bottles.5
This method kept meth cooks alive but they could only make small batches.
What constituted a ometh labo took on a much smaller scaleua hotel room,
car, or garage could serve to cook up these small batches. This process resulted in large quantities of toxic trash that had to be disposed of somehow.
In an odd twist of fate, rural Missouri turned out to be the meth manufacturing center of the country. Factory jobs disappeared or left the country leaving the unemployed desperate for income. Some began cooking the drug and others distributed it. Other Missourians needed this drug so they could work two industrial jobs or keep up with the demands for speed in meat-packing plants. In 2012, while there were 79 meth lab seizures in California and 96 in Pennsylvania, there were 1,825 in Missouri. The number two location for seizures was right next door in Tennessee at 1,585.6
The Fourth Assault: Mexican Meth Arrives
At the same time that Missouri was the top meth lab seizure state, dozens
of industrial-sized meth labs began to be dismantled in Mexico. The most spectacular seizure of the drug occurred outside Guadalajara where 15 tons
of finished crystal meth was seized. The value of that haul, if sold on the street, would have been $1.2 billion.7
Port of entry, Mexican-U.S. border
These huge labs were the result of cartels that had been trafficking heroin and marijuana looking to profit from the popularity of meth. The product
they began to bring into the U.S. on their usual trafficking channels was cheaper and purer than anything seen before. It came into the country in commercial and personal vehicles passing through the Ports of Entry on the border. The cartels began importing large quantities of precursor chemicals from Asia to keep their factories running around the clock.[8]
To make matters worse, this stronger methamphetamine was often adulterated with fentanyl. Whether the contamination was accidental or intentional,
some people who thought they were getting meth instead fatally overdosed on the powerful opioid fentanyl.
As the use of this new, cheaper drug resurged, rural areas were
particularly hard hit. In Kentucky, for example, overdose deaths involving methamphetamine increased 65% in just two years.[9]
The Fifth Assault: A New Formula Drives High Incidence of Mental Illness
In the last decade, there has been a whole new assault on American rural areas. This time, the drug used in this assault is a powerfully potent form
of the drug renowned for causing a high incidence of psychosis among users.
In 2012, this new drug was making its way into Southern California. Over
the next several years, it spread across the country.
A 2022 report noted that as opioids became less available due to reduced prescribing, some people switched to methamphetamine as their drug of
choice. For a while, it was viewed as less risky and it was certainly
cheaper. This newest method of cooking meth was called P2P. While meth
abuse had always created mental and physical damage, this new kind of meth accelerated the harm.8
Medical professionals began to report a higher incidence of methamphetamine psychosis among patients seen in ERs and hospitals. One-third of the
patients being diagnosed with this problem experienced extended periods of hospitalization lasting 60 to 90 days.8
Another 2022 report studied which drugs were being used by those living in rural communities in multiple states. Nearly 80% of 3,048 drug users stated that they had used methamphetamine in the past 30 days.
Some of these people were mixing methamphetamine and opioid use and they
had the greatest risk of overdose. Of those drug users, 22% had suffered a non-fatal overdose. Of those using opioids alone, only 14% suffered
overdoses along with 6% of methamphetamine-only users.9
By the late teens, prices on U.S. streets dropped 90% from the price a
decade earlier. As marijuana became legal in more states, cartels could replace those sales with methamphetamine.
The incidence of mental illness grew, stressing state and local resources available to help these people. Meth users wouldnAt just go mad while they were using the drug. As noted above, their psychosis could last months or years after they stopped using ituor forever.1 As a result, this new drug began to fuel homelessness in urban centers as well as ruining lives in
rural areas.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2