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Jewish World Review April 1, 2005 / 21 Adar II, 5765 The reality of ‘Invasion Iowa’ By Froma Harrop
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
"Invasion Iowa" is a new TV reality show. A fake film crew
descends on a small town and pretends to make a science-fiction movie. The
locals try out for the "parts." The humor is gentle. This is the Iowa of
apple pies, tidy lawns and nice farm folk.
But Iowa has another reality, and there's nothing funny about
it. Iowa has been invaded, all right, and the ravager is crystal meth.
Methamphetamine is possibly the worst drug of all time. It
quickly clamps a hard addiction onto users. The end product is
hallucinations and paranoiac rages. People trying to kick meth may need two
years to even start feeling normal.
Crystal meth ruins lives. Iowa broke up 1,472 meth labs last
year alone. And the state now cares for 1,000 children abused by their
parents' meth habits. Methamphetamine is responsible for 62 percent of the
admissions into state prisons. Iowa's heartache is shared across the
Heartland — from Idaho to Nebraska to Indiana to Oklahoma.
And how has the Bush administration responded? By cutting
drug-treatment programs. The proposed new budget would also slash federal
funding for meth-related law enforcement and environmental cleanup by 50
percent.
The states try to do what they can. Iowa has just passed a stiff
law limiting people's ability to buy cold medicines at drugstores. Sudafed,
Dimetapp and other common cold remedies contain pseudoephedrine — a key
ingredient in methamphetamine.
Meth is not a ghetto drug. Its users are over 90 percent white.
And while the epidemic is spreading, it remains concentrated in America's
Heartland. There are several reasons. One is privacy. People can cook meth
in their kitchens or bathrooms. And it's easier to hide such activities in a
rural area.
You can go to a Wal-Mart and buy almost everything you need to
make methamphetamine. Tupperware containers can hold the acids. The only
ingredient not widely sold is anhydrous ammonia. But it's easily found on
farms, which use it for fertilizer.
Homemade meth can unleash a more intense high than drugs coming
from California or Mexico, which tend to be less pure. And rural drug
addicts might prefer buying from local sources — and avoiding the savagery
of big-time dealers.
Why is such an awful drug so popular? The obvious attraction is
the high. (With time, of course, the pleasure surge gets harder to reach.)
People also take meth to lose weight — which accounts for the high number
of female addicts, many of them mothers.
Meth also keeps people awake. Social workers say hard times in
rural America have people holding two or more jobs. The tired drudges take
meth to keep going. Marvin Van Haaften, Iowa's drug czar, says he came
across a farmer who used meth during the harvest season. The drug helped him
work three days straight. The farmer is now in jail.
Meth has become especially popular among truck drivers. Truckers
call it High Speed Chicken Feed. At truck stops, meth sellers run right up
to drivers' cabs with their wares.
The saddest victims are children. Meth fumes coming from the
kitchen damage their lungs. And their meth-addicted parents often neglect
them. Police raiding home-based meth labs say they've opened refrigerators
to find meth oil but no milk. The children are often dirty.
Law enforcement hates the scourge. Wherever there is meth
production, there are lots of loaded weapons. Three Oklahoma highway-patrol
officers have been killed in meth-related cases. Kansas named its own law
restricting the sale of cold medicines after Matt Samuels, a county sheriff
murdered while trying to arrest a man cooking meth in his home.
When it comes to anti-social behavior, the meth trade knows no
bottom. One drug maker reportedly ordered his child to shoot anyone coming
near the family lab.
Our congressmen in Washington, meanwhile, don't seem very
interested. They prefer lining up to denounce the use of steroids in Major
League Baseball.
The Defense Department is requesting — and will probably get —
$257 million to slow the drug trade in Afghanistan. After all, heroin
trafficking helps fund terrorism.
There's a difference, one supposes, between foreigners
terrorizing Americans and Americans terrorizing each other. But an invasion
is still an invasion. Iowa knows all about it.
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© 2005 Creators Syndicate |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
