San Francisco Chronicle - The Voice of the West, 901 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94119 - Monday, December 3, 1996 - Page D1
Sabin Russell, Chronicle Staff Writer

Studies have shown that the illegal use of methamphetamines is growing in the United States, driven in part by a shift in production from small kitchen-countertop laboratories to Mexican factories controlled by organized crime.

The two-day regional conference, sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), brings together university researchers and frontline drug treatment professionals to compare notes on effective means of combatting speed, which is sold in a dozen different forms with street names such as crystal, crank, tweak and ice.

Although battling crack cocaine remains the top priority of federal policymakers, NIDA Director Alan Leshner said that speed "may be as addicting a substance as crack cocaine and could be more powerful."

Nationwide, deaths due to methamphetamine overdoses rose 125 percent between 1993 and 1995, and now account for 10 percent of all drug-overdose deaths in the United States, according to James Hall, executive director of the Miami Coalition for a Safe and Drug- Free Community.

Of particular concern to health officials is the popularity of speed among some segments of the gay community and the link between its use and the spread of AIDS.

Although speed can be taken in pill form or snorted, it can also be injected with a hypodermic needle, a practice that carries with it its own hazards. In San Francisco, 60 percent of the injection drug users diagnosed with AIDS are gay men. In Seattle, the figure is 70 percent.

Speed is doubly dangerous to people at risk for AIDS because it encourages needle sharing and dampens sexual inhibitions. Sharing of needles has become the primary source of HIV transmission in the United States.

Sexual transmission remains a major problem, and the mythology of speed is steeped in sex. "People believe it increases sexual prowess and sexual duration," said Leshner.

A study by the University of California at San Francisco's Center for AIDS Prevention Studies found that gay men who are consistent users of methamphetamines have about the same statistical risk of becoming infected with the AIDS virus as gay men who practice unprotected anal intercourse.

Much of the two-day meeting at UCSF's Laurel Heights conference center is focused on gaining an understanding why speed is so popular among some social groups despite its obvious dangers -- knowledge that could lead to more effective prevention programs.
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