Crystal Meth Producers Are Polluting Environment
May 29, 2005 · By kaqchikel
Crystal Meth (methamphetamine hydrochloride) has been wreaking havoc among users for sometime. Because it is cheap and widely available, it has become the hard drug of choice among teens. Its spread has become a veritable problem. But now, it is also becoming the problem of environmentalists –whose ranks are populated by a strong youthful contingent.
Police in Alberta say crystal meth producers are polluting ground and water with toxic byproducts.
The charge is in a report released this week by the Criminal Intelligence Service Alberta, an alliance of police agencies that monitors serious crime in the province.
The report says toxic chemicals used in cooking the drug are often dumped with no regard to their negative impact on the environment. (Edmonton Journal, subscription required)
A CBC report from back in March had already made the connection between Crystal Meth and its environment-polluting by-products. In addition, the same report also shows that Crystal Meth is highly used in the gay community.
In recent years, crystal meth has become the drug of choice in the gay men’s party scene. Like the mainstream use of the drug, this trend spread from west to east - San Francisco to New York and Vancouver to Toronto. At “PNP” parties (shorthand for “party and play” - meaning sex and drugs), crystal meth, known as “tina,” increases energy and reduces sexual inhibition. And the superhuman feeling that often comes with a crystal meth high means the sex is often unprotected.
Since in the present social climate, any potential damage to mother earth will likely be seen as a greater affront than the damage caused to users, families, the social fabric, and rising health costs, there may now be a greater chance to bring people to attack the problem with more seriousness. Users themselves who might be green ideologues will be confronted with a moral dilemma.
I look forward to the time when environmentalists will begin picketing crystal meth manufacturing labs and gay bath houses, calling for a worldwide boycott of the polluting drug.
Cross posted from Civitatensis.
Perhaps the Liberals can just put another box on the Gun Registry form(surly the Labs have guns). It might ask.
Are you properly protecting the environment from your Crystal Meth Lab?
There, problem solved.
Perhaps increased penalties will stop them. Why do we only torture terrorists, and not anti-environment, black-market druggists?
If we legalized crystal meth, we could monitor and regulate the dumping of the production by-products, as we do with any other industry.
Or both!
Here’s an experiment. Try to think of all the bad drugs that people take and that government bans. Now think of all the bad habits we have and that government either tries to ban or tax so heavily to make them unbearingly expensive.
After you’ve added up all those bad drugs and habits, ask yourself whether we’d be more free with government having banned them or by regulating them. Before answering, also ask yourself how many other things government regulates for our “protection.”
Are we more free when government protects us from ourselves by means of banning stuff or by regulating it?
Er… Is that a trick question?
Dunno. Uhh, my drinking water tastes funny.