The San Francisco Examiner; Tuesday, Dec. 3, 1996
Eric Brazil of the Examiner Staff

Only crack cocaine and heroin have addicted and destroyed more Americans than methamphetamine - also known as crystal, crank, speed, ice, chalk and glass - said Alan Leshner.

"There is no medication for methamphetamine addition, and its use is increasing and starting to move east," said Leshner, who organized the two-day regional symposium on the drug at UCSF's Laurel Heights Conference Center.

Nationwide, there were 751 deaths and 27,329 emergency room admissions attributable to methamphetamine - increases of 125 and 150 percent, respectively, over 1990 totals.

In San Francisco deaths rose 22 percent, and emergency room visits jumped 122 percent.

A recent San Francisco study indicated that gay men who injected methamphetamine were four times as likely as non-users to be HIV-positive. "It's very much an epidemic," said T. Ronald Jackson, director of the Evergreen Treatment center in Seattle.

Methamphetamine use, particularly by injection, "is a very salient risk factor (for AIDS), comparable to unprotected anal intercourse," said Michael Gorman, research scientist at the University of Washington's Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute.

Nevertheless, it remains popular.

Answers to the question "why love crystal" meth on the graffiti-covered "talking wall" in San Francisco's Castro District recently included:

* "Sex fantasies become real."

* "Similar to coke but cheaper."

* "Being able to dance forever."

* "The community is full of grief, and people just want to go out and party."

The drug produces a long-lasting high, and users say that it prolongs and enhances sex. But Leshner warned the drug had "some terrible, long-term side effects leading people to high-risk behavior." It also can cause irreversible brain damage, he said.

Leshner said that while a great deal was known about the properties of methamphetamine, there was an enormous gap between that knowledge and effective preventive and treatment strategies.

Though the "crank" industry began as a kitchen-and-garage business by individual entrepreneurs, notably bikers, it has been taken over to a great extent by organized criminal gangs, and production has shifted increasingly to Mexico.

The drug is spreading throughout rural America and can be found in farmworker communities all the way from Texas to the Canadian border, said Claire Sterk, an Emory University scientist. "We're no longer talking about a problem that's concentrated in specific (urban) areas. Methedrine is moving eastward."

Result: child abuse, domestic violence and youth addiction to methamphetamine are on the rise in rural America, she said.

Wendy Lindley, a judge in an Orange County drug court in Laguna Niguel, said that many of the youths she saw were high-income, high-achieving scholars and athletes. "They think that it (methamphetamine) enhances their studies and their athletic ability," she said. "They aren't bad kids. They don't do crimes of violence. But they are addicted."

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