Drug-Prevention Groups Warn of Meth’s Spread Across America

As part of its efforts to fight methamphetamine abuse, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, in New York, introduced

a Spanish-language advertising campaign last summer that the group hopes will appeal to both Hispanic teenagers and their parents and lead to candid discussions. One ad, for example, shows a young Latina wearing sunglasses and a scarf. As she talks rapidly about how using meth with her friends is “no big deal,” the sunglasses and scarf are removed to show the crumbling teeth, skin lesions, and blank yet restless eyes of a meth addict.

Hispanic teenagers are almost twice as likely to have tried meth than their white or black peers, according to a study the organization released last year. Moreover, one in three Hispanic teenagers reported having close friends who use the drug, versus one in five white or black teenagers.

The Spanish-language campaign is just one example of how nonprofit groups and grant makers nationwide are refining their anti-meth messages to respond to the new realities of methamphetamine availability and use.

Over the past decade, methamphetamine has crept steadily eastward across the United States, clustering in both rural areas and large cities like Seattle, Denver, and Minneapolis.

Sophisticated Mexican drug cartels have supplanted homegrown meth manufacturers, bringing a product that is increasingly cheap and potent across the border along with cocaine and other drugs, experts say. The cartels are not only meeting consumer demand, but are also poised to lure new users who might not otherwise have been offered the drug.

Traditionally, for example, crack dealers have not also sold methamphetamine, which could be seen as a competing product. That dynamic has helped tamp down the availability of meth in urban areas east of the Mississippi.

Why the Drug Is Popular

But that is changing, says Mike Townsend, executive vice president of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America: “Now, with the Mexican cartels, dealers have a broader array of drugs to sell. The demarcation lines are blurring.”

These trends worry Mr. Townsend and others who have studied the drug’s trajectory. Meth is clearly gaining a foothold among people who didn’t previously use it in large numbers — including women, gay and bisexual men, Latinos, and American Indians — and in ever-expanding geographic areas, including the Southeast and East Coast.

Because the drug provides an intense rush of energy and euphoria, experts say it is often used by people who want to find a way to deal with depression or lessen social anxiety. Women have been especially attracted to it, they say, because it has the potential to help them lose weight and maintain frenetic schedules. Still other users may be poor and disenfranchised, seeking to escape boredom and a dearth of economic opportunities.

The multitude of reasons people are enticed to the drug, and the way it is sold, helps explain why certain places and populations are being hit hard while others are emerging relatively unscathed, say charity and foundation leaders.

“The critical issue with methamphetamine is understanding why people are using it, and I don’t think anyone is using meth because they want to destroy their lives,” says Reena Szczepanski, director of Drug Policy Alliance New Mexico, in Santa Fe.

Aiding American Indians

In one move to reach a segment of Americans who have been hard hit, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America recently announced a new anti-meth campaign geared toward American Indians, who, along with Native Hawaiians, have the highest rates of meth use among members of ethnic groups.

“Everywhere that you have poverty, desperation, and lack of opportunity, you tend to have substance abuse,” says Mr. Townsend. “And meth has really whacked Indian Country.”

Mr. Townsend said that although the details have yet to be worked out, his group will collaborate with the National Congress of American Indians, in Washington, on the campaign, which will be financed by three federal agencies.

Major urban areas face meth-related problems of their own.

In New York and elsewhere, the drug’s popularity has grown among some gay and bisexual men. Says Jay Laudato, executive director of the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, in New York, a clinic that serves gay men and lesbians: “People didn’t realize how incredibly potent [meth] was, and how incredibly addictive it was, and what the health consequences were.”

In response, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and Cable Positive, two entertainment-industry groups that support AIDS-prevention efforts, have given money to pay for a recent public-service campaign in which the actresses Whoopi Goldberg, Amanda Peet, Rosie Perez, and Susan Sarandon impart frank, down-to-earth messages that tie the use of drugs — in particular meth — with high-risk sexual practices among men who have sex with men.

The ads are a joint effort by Callen-Lorde and HIV Forum NYC, which works to prevent HIV transmission among gay and bisexual men in the city.

And while meth is still considered a “white” drug, some epidemiologists say they have seen increases in use among African-Americans in Atlanta, Houston, and elsewhere and worry about the drug’s potential to spill over into disadvantaged black neighborhoods in urban areas.

“We just have to wait and see,” says Brian J. Dew, chair of the Atlanta Meth Task Force and an assistant professor in the department of counseling and psychological services at Georgia State University. “But my hunch is it will grow.”

Challenges in Atlanta

Geography also plays a major role as nonprofit groups struggle to keep up with the new wave of methamphetamine availability and use.

The booming Atlanta metropolitan region, for example, sits at the confluence of three major interstates, routes that the drug cartels use to ferry the drug down to Florida and up the East Coast.

Mr. Dew says that huge quantities of the drug are used, stored, or distributed in the 20 counties that make up metropolitan Atlanta, and that it is the only major metropolitan area where women outnumber men among those seeking public treatment, at approximately 61 percent to 39 percent. Says Mr. Dew: “The meth problem we have in Atlanta is far different from anywhere else in the South, and really anywhere east of the Mississippi.”

Yet awareness of the drug and its dangers remains relatively low, as methamphetamine has slowly become more popular in the region over the past five or so years.

At the Genesis Prevention Coalition, an Atlanta group that works primarily with black and Latino adolescents, Mikhail Abdulbaaqee, the coalition’s executive director, says that although alcohol and marijuana remain the top substance-abuse issues affecting the kids he works with, meth “is coming.”

His group is seeking to ward off a meth crisis among Atlanta-area teenagers by handing out pamphlets in schools; sending out e-mail “blasts”; appearing on local talk shows; holding press conferences; and giving educational presentations to Fulton County school counselors.

Mr. Dew of the Atlanta Meth Task Force says that such efforts by his group and others, aimed at achieving a “tipping point” in education about the drug, are crucial in metropolitan Atlanta and other urban areas in the South and along the East Coast.

“It’s one thing to have a drug that’s being used despite people knowing the ill effects, knowing how dangerous it is — but it’s another thing for them not to even be aware.”

Meeting With Residents

In one innovative approach, last year the Partnership for a Drug-Free America started a project, dubbed “Meth 360,” to find new ways to prevent meth from taking hold in regions where it is not yet readily available.

The organization is holding meetings with local residents — as well as broadcasting public-service announcements — in Oklahoma and Washington State, where meth has been entrenched for some time.

It is taking the same approach in Northern Virginia and upstate New York, where the drug is increasingly prevalent, and hoping to learn lessons it can use in other regions.

The project stresses the need for local residents to be aware of the dangers of the drug and to mobilize efforts to prevent it from spreading, acknowledging that law-enforcement officials cannot keep it off the streets without help.

The partnership is evaluating whether the combined approach of local meetings and advertising is changing attitudes, altering use of the drug, and getting more people in each region involved in fighting the spread of meth.

Mr. Townsend says that in Oklahoma and Washington State, where public-awareness levels about methamphetamine are relatively high, residents are most interested in learning more about law enforcement and treatment.

But in the two regions where meth is just now becoming widely available, people wanted to know the basics, including what the drug looks like, how it is used, and so on.

Says Mr. Townsend: “The thinking was, It’s probably inevitable and, by golly, we should learn about it and be prepared for it.”

He says that the Meth 360 project will be expanded over the coming months, with 10 more states added, including two additional places where the drug is growing more popular: Florida and North Carolina.

Mr. Townsend says the project seeks both to make residents aware of the threat posed by meth and to convince them that the drug affects everyone in a given geographic area — much like secondhand smoke.

He adds that the next two years will be critical as to whether the spread of methamphetamine up and down the East Coast can be stanched.

“We have a chance to blunt the impact,” says Mr. Townsend, “if we can educate enough people quickly enough.”