The Culture Of Meth, Ctd

A reader writes:

I agree with this reader. When I was in college in the early 90's my friends and I did a lot of LSD. A lot of that was simple economics. At $5-8 per hit, it was entertainment until sunrise plus cheaper and easier to get than alcohol (us being under 21, and the Dead were still touring). It was so much more bang for your buck.

When I moved to London in the mid-late 90's, everyone was taking speed (amphetamine sulphate, not crystal meth). Again, one person could be high all night (even at inflated nightclub-dealers' prices) for less money than a round of drinks. Ecstasy was better and available, but more expensive. Coke was expensive. LSD was cheaper, but only on the rare occasion you could find it. But a night on speed was a cheap night out. When the price of E crashed, everyone started gobbling pills like M&Ms.

While I was in London, back in the US heroin was suddenly available cheaply (and fashionable thanks to grunge-rock). People started dabbling in that, because it cost as much as a movie-ticket and a couple of beers. I haven't been interested in drugs for years, but lately (in England) it seems all the young people in my office (in entry-level positions) are doing a lot of cocaine at the weekends and this is in no small part because the price has crashed (and the price per pint has risen). If you want to get out of your head for a night, it offers the most bang for your buck. I don't doubt that if crystal meth were as available and cheap as LSD that my college friends and I would have been a bunch of meth-heads instead of acid-freaks.

I'm very happy that the cheap-drug-of-choice in those days was one that wasn't habit-forming and mentally wore us out such that we could simply say "No, not this weekend. I'm too tired and have stuff to do tomorrow" without any twitching or withdrawal. If the DEA and other government bodies really wanted to get people off meth, they'd covertly flood the market with cheap LSD and ecstasy.

Or pot. No one goes on murder sprees or stays up for days on end when they smoke pot.