METHAMPHETAMINE

Methamphetamine

Introduction

Drugs comprise an array of chemical compounds that affect the human mind and body, and they occur in natural and synthetic, and licit and illicit forms. They are produced, exchanged, and consumed for numerous reasons, including for use in recreational and religious settings as well as medicinal purposes. Drugs and drug use are central to human health, welfare, and custom, and hold high cultural and economic value. At the same time, they can cause profound public health issues that often relate to drug abuse and dependence and also issues of criminalization. The geographies of drugs are therefore complex and contradictory. They operate at multiple scales that overlap and entwine, both linking and distancing people and places with and from each other, reaching through time as well as space. This entry begins with historical geographies of drugs in their various traditional, popular, commercial, medicinal, and illicit forms. It then looks at narcotics production under UN regulation; illicit drugs in the developing world; the growth in production of synthetic drugs; issues of drug addiction, related health problems, and treatment; and the use of spatial approaches in the analysis and policing of drugs

Methamphetamine is a synthetic man-made chemical form of drug which is inexpensive and easily available in market.? Methamphetamine is typically produced in illegal clandestine laboratories from various forms of amphetamines or their derivatives, which are mixed with other chemicals to enhance their impact. Methamphetamine is usually available in powder form. It is odorless, bitter in taste and easily soluble in water and alcohol.

The abuse of methamphetamine is a powerful and highly addictive stimulant which is an extremely serious problem in the United States. Although initially the drug is used primarily in Hawaii and the western parts of the United States, methamphetamine abuse continues to spread eastward and is increasingly affecting the urban and rural areas across the country. According to a national survey, approximately 10 million people in the United States have tried methamphetamine at least once in their life.

Discussion

Methamphetamine is a synthetic stimulant drug which induces a strong feeling of euphoria and is highly addictive. Methamphetamine is the most commonly used illicit drug after cannabis in North America, Eastern and South-East Asia, Oceania, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It was used during the Second World War to boost the concentration of troops and activate their performance. However, prescription and selling of methamphetamine suffers restrictions in the late 1950s, but methamphetamine returned in the illicit production and distribution after the 1960s. The use of methamphetamine, known worldwide as “ice” or as yaa baa (meaning “madness”) in Southeast Asia, is associated with students and workers as much as with partygoers and nightclubs but still threaten serious psychological, generational, and socioeconomic damage. (Hadland, Scott, 2008)

In the past, it was believed that rural youth were less likely to use illicit drugs than were urban youth, with the exception of stimulants. More recent evidence suggests that rural youth are more likely than urban youth to use a variety of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and ...