North America has spent over $1 trillion since 1971 attempting to win the “war on drugs,” but efforts to address the supply and demand of these substances — including crystal meth — have produced mixed results.
Former United States president Richard Nixon declared at that time, “In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.”
The result of that offensive has been the longest, most expensive, and deadliest war in human history. More than one million Americans have died by overdose, with more than 800,000 deaths since 1999.
Governments have taken two approaches to drug abuse and drug-related crime: supply-side intervention and demand-side intervention, Rom Jukes, a health promotion practitioner, said on behalf of the Moose Jaw Crystal Meth Strategy Committee.
The former approach involves surveillance, regulation, arrest and prosecution, incarceration, search and seizure, organized crime infiltration, and crop eradication. The latter approach involves education, treatment, prevention, drug court, and harm reduction.
The committee prefers to take a proactive, preventative path that addresses the demand-side before anything negative happens to people, said Mary Lee Booth, prevention and awareness campaign co-ordinator. Since the health-care and justice systems are reactive, the committee wants to beat the problem and educate people, so demand declines for crystal meth.
Supply-side intervention
With methamphetamine, it is a synthetic material that combines basic ingredients — particularly from cold medicines — into one substance. Since this substance requires these “precursor” building blocks, that allowed governments to apply supply-side interventions to regulate and control these materials, said Jukes.
However, this approach only shifted the production to other countries and led to transnational crime organizations building sophisticated “super labs” that flooded the black market. Furthermore, these groups trafficked the precursor chemicals necessary for production.
“The theory behind the regulation of precursors is that by disrupting the supply chain of these criminal enterprises, the cost of methamphetamines will rise, the purity of the drug will decrease, and the demand among users will decrease,” Jukes said.
A strong benefit for regulation is it avoids putting drug users in prison, he continued. From 1980 to 2011, the rate of incarceration in the U.S. rose from 100 users per 100,000 people to 492 users per 100,000 people. Furthermore, the percentage of drug-related sentences increased to 48 per cent from 22 per cent.
Meth, the second most popular drug worldwide, accounts for most of these incarcerations. In 2018, methamphetamine offences accounted for 39.8 per cent of all U.S. federal drug cases.
In Canada, in 2019, police arrested nearly 15,000 people for meth-related crimes, including 10,000 for simple possession.
Critics of the supply-side approach argue that the most successful examples of this intervention only affected the price and purity for two years before they returned to original levels — or increased, Jukes continued. Another critique is that supply-side interventions create a vicious cycle between law enforcement and crime. This results in the drug war escalating and a new black market emerging for “pre”-precursor chemicals.
Demand-side intervention
Conversely, demand-side interventions aim to reduce the amount of drug abuse rather than the amount of drugs. Since the 1980s, research has shown treatment programs with high relapse rates can be more cost-effective than enforcement tactics. For example, sharing of needles among meth users resulted in more transmissions of HIV and Hepatitis C.
In 2015, there were an estimated 2,000 drug-injecting users in Saskatoon, while that city had an HIV rate three times the national average, said Jukes. Nearly 80 per cent of infections were due to injection drug use, compared to the national average of under 20 per cent. A paper published that year concluded that creating two safe injection sites in Saskatoon saved taxpayers $764,970.
In October 2020, the Prairie Harm Reduction Safe Consumption Site opened in Saskatoon. However, while the provincial government provided some funding, it denied other funding requests for a safe consumption program.
“Public opinion has also been mixed,” Jukes continued, pointing out that 80 per cent of people believe addiction is a health-care issue, but fewer than half believe the government should fund the Saskatoon site. “Demand-side interventions — which do garner public support and significant funding — (do sometimes) fail to deliver genuine results.”
Different opinions, different approaches
This failure is shown through a prevention campaign in Montana in 2005, which focused on graphic advertising of the dangers of meth. While the project’s advocates claimed the campaign worked, independent and peer-reviewed inquiries questioned the results.
“Methamphetamine is a major concern across multiple levels of society. Whether considering public health, criminal justice, or social stability, there is little argument that intervention is desperately needed,” said Jukes. “(However), the question of which interventions are most effective and deserving of support does not experience a similar level of consensus.”
While the public sees this problem more through a health and addiction lens, he pointed out that the interventions receiving the most funding emphasize enforcement. Demand-side efforts that receive support often contribute to fear and stigma and are seen as ineffective or counter-productive.
“The way a problem is framed becomes a major factor in how we then try solving that problem,” he continued.
The dominant response to drug abuse during the last 50 years has been an “us versus them” mentality against an enemy invasion. Therefore, Jukes noted, it shouldn’t be surprising when society’s preferred interventions are ones that “attack back.”
Full community response
The Moose Jaw Crystal Meth Strategy Committee is working toward a better, more effective response to the meth crisis, which includes interventions that positively affect the community, said Jukes. The goal is to build a community where society’s collective ingenuity responds to the problems affecting everyone.
“Those who suffer in war are not only the combatants but everyone on or near the battlefield. Similarly, when the war ends, everyone becomes safer and more able to thrive,” he added. “The difference between victory and surrender is a matter of perspective. But from our perspective at the crystal meth strategy (committee), if a war can never be won, does the difference matter?”
