But also, two: There is more meth on the streets today, more people are using it, and more of them are dying.ĭrugs go through cycles - in the 1980s and early ’90s, the use of crack cocaine surged. One: The number of domestic meth labs has declined precipitously, and along with it the number of children harmed and police officers sickened by exposure to dangerous chemicals. The decades-long effort to fight methamphetamine is a tale with two takeaways. “But where there is a void,” he added, “someone fills it.” Ujifusa, a senior prosecutor in Multnomah County, which includes Portland. “It was like someone turned off a switch,” said J.R. Oregon took a hard line against meth in 2006, when it began requiring a doctor’s prescription to buy the nasal decongestant used to make it. Methamphetamine, experts say, has never been purer, cheaper or more lethal. At the United States border, agents are seizing 10 to 20 times the amounts they did a decade ago. Here in Oregon, meth-related deaths vastly outnumber those from heroin. But 12 years after Congress took aggressive action to curtail it, meth has returned with a vengeance. The scourge of crystal meth, with its exploding labs and ruinous effect on teeth and skin, has been all but forgotten amid national concern over the opioid crisis.
“Everybody has meth around here - everybody,” said Sean, a 27-year-old heroin user who hangs out downtown and gave only his first name. But a different drug was far more likely to be on offer outside the train station downtown, where homeless drug users live in tents pitched on the sidewalk. They huddled against the biting wind, pacing from one corner to another hoping to score heroin or pills.
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