Faces Of Meth

[RedBlackAttack]

Why have a problem with such a propaganda? If it scares two or three people from messing with it then thats a success

...because I think it is time this nation grows up when it comes to discussing drugs. Right now, you have two sectors of Americans. Those who have not done drugs and think, if they do, their lives will be ruined forever and those who have and laugh at these kinds of campaigns.

I'm not saying either side is correct in their interpretation. The truth lies somewhere in between those extremes. We are now four decades into the War on Drugs and there has not been one piece of data indicating it has had any positive effect on anything related to drugs, other than demonizing users/dealers.

Campaigns like this one takes the most extreme addiction cases and turns them into circus freaks who are mocked across the Internet. If there was one piece of data showing this kind of thing actually helps people turn away from meth, I'd throw my complete support behind it, but this is a tried and failed method of the War on Drugs.

To me, it just does more to strengthen the disconnect between drug people and non-drug people. Then again, we still live in a country that will lock a person up for decades for completely non-violent drug offenses, so I guess I should just accept the fact that we are miles away from anything resembling a coherent, adult conversation about the nature of drug use in America.

[RedBlackAttack]

DARE caused me to abstain from drug use for a long time, until late in high school, but once I tried MJ and found that all the propaganda was mostly bullshit it caused me to use it and other drugs to the point where it negatively affected my life. Sort of like the preacher's daughter who goes to college and turns into a total hoe.

Exactly. Once you find out it was a completely over-the-top indoctrination via propaganda, you don't trust anything the authorities have to say on the matter. It kills their credibility.

And, when some college kid is offered a line of meth at a party and finally tries it after years of abstaining due to some ugly pictures posted on the Internet, he will have a similar reaction when he wakes up the next day completely normal. At that point, all of this stuff will be flushed down the toilet for him, even though there is a kernel of truth in there and meth should be feared on some level.

Again, this stuff doesn't work and it could end up doing more harm than good.

[TheMan]

I don't do drugs, I just smoke MJ once in a while. All that other crap like coke, meth, heroin, acid etc, fvck that, ain't touching that junk.

[rufuspaul]

No not in my job. Volunteer work. Started with my brothers GF a few years ago, watched her go down the rabbit hole and never really come back.

She tried and tried but there was no true family support system in place for her, did the rehab shuffle over and over. She literally had to almost die to get the help she needed to get her life somewhat on track but she'll never be the same, she's fried.

That led from one thing to another now I and two other locals sponsor recovering addicts through a half way house we support. We basically badger various agencies to do their jobs and hold people hands through the system. It takes a few hours a week there's no financial burden except buying somebody some of the staples of life.

We get on a lot of people nerves but there are addicts that need advocates because they have no support system and with no formal educations in the field we do it from a different angle, we have no dog in the fight, nothing to lose so we drive people nuts.

It's amazing what you can get done when you don't have to answer to anyone but the person who needs a hand. The people that chose to make a career out of helping others are Saints but they have rules and red tape and a billion other things to contend with.

I highly encourage everyone to take a few minutes a week to doing one thing to make somebody else's life better.

And you're correct Meth is a one hit wonder. For some one hit and you'll wonder where your life went

I've seen first hand what it does to one's teeth. Horrible shit.

I suppose there are people that can use meth recreationally and not mess themselves up but it seems to me (purely anecdotally) that when it comes to meth and heroin they are kind of in a class by themselves.

[Rake2204]

Exactly. Once you find out it was a completely over-the-top indoctrination via propaganda, you don't trust anything the authorities have to say on the matter. It kills their credibility.

And, when some college kid is offered a line of meth at a party and finally tries it after years of abstaining due to some ugly pictures posted on the Internet, he will have a similar reaction when he wakes up the next day completely normal. At that point, all of this stuff will be flushed down the toilet for him, even though there is a kernel of truth in there and meth should be feared on some level.

Again, this stuff doesn't work and it could end up doing more harm than good.

You bring an interesting perspective to the table and I think there's a lot of merit to it. Do you feel an exact truth approach would help? At some point, regardless of propaganda, do you believe it just comes down to people being informed and making educated decisions? I do not believe trying drugs will ruin my life, but I've decided that they're not necessary to my life and not worth any sort of risk associated with them, no matter how small. At the end of the day, with scare tactics or exacting facts, will it not similarly come down to folks thinking for themselves and making a choice?

Further, do you see a difference between scare tactics for "lighter" drugs like weed in comparison to heavy drugs like meth? Meth seems to pretty clearly own a universal reputation for being just absolutely terrible. Do you think things such as Faces of Meth help reiterate such a negative consensus, perhaps rightfully?

[rufuspaul]

They should do a "Faces of Weed" campaign. Similar to Catz' "Post pics of you getting blazed" thread.

[Money 23]

Lol. Meth suppresses your appetite quite well because of the dopamine. I agree with the other poster, these are extreme cases.

Though I am always fearful of my skin because I take amphetamines for add and I experience similar symptoms(bruxism being a major one, my lips are constantly bitten until they bleed).

I take amphetamines (Vyvanse) for adult A.D.D.

Why would you be fearful for you skin? And should I? What amphetamine do you take?

Only side effects I get is oppressed appetite, I usually lose weight quite easily when I take it. Sometimes get heart murmurs, and occasionally some sleepless nights depending on when I take it in the morning.

I should peddle the stuff to fat girls in order to help them lose weight. It really truly works. I will be hungry, stomach making all kinds of noise, know I'm hungry ... but won't have the urge to eat at all. And when I do, I barely eat.

But tell me about these skin side effects. I haven't experienced any thus far.

[OhNoTimNoSho]

Only side effects I get is oppressed appetite,

You keep oppressing your appetite and it will rise up and overthrow you.

[Money 23]

You keep oppressing your appetite and it will rise up and overthrow you.

good catch. Meant suppress haha, brain fart.

[highwhey]

I take amphetamines (Vyvanse) for adult A.D.D.

Why would you be fearful for you skin? And should I? What amphetamine do you take?

Only side effects I get is oppressed appetite, I usually lose weight quite easily when I take it. Sometimes get heart murmurs, and occasionally some sleepless nights depending on when I take it in the morning.

I should peddle the stuff to fat girls in order to help them lose weight. It really truly works. I will be hungry, stomach making all kinds of noise, know I'm hungry ... but won't have the urge to eat at all. And when I do, I barely eat.

But tell me about these skin side effects. I haven't experienced any thus far.

Vyvanse is levo-something that eventually turns into dextroamphetamine in your body. I take adderall, which is a mix of amphetamines(dextroamp being one of them). I really want to take vyvanse though, but i cant afford it.

I dont know if it affects skin but there are reports of "adderall acne" and some minor skin picking. Btw, bruxism is very common as is dry mouth, which can damage your teeth. I have gone too many nights without sleeping also, fcking sucks.

I use to have very little appetite also. But even at a high dose i overeat lol. Enjoy it while it lasts!

[zizozain]

[oh the horror]

Does this drug mess up with your cells DNA? what causes the drastic physical changes? bad diet and poor lifestyle or the drug itself?

Id guess a combination of no sleep, the drug itself, and no eating for long periods of time. Imagine putting a chemical into your system, on top of not eating or drinking fluids for long periods of time, and not sleeping.

[tomtucker]

[RedBlackAttack]

You bring an interesting perspective to the table and I think there's a lot of merit to it. Do you feel an exact truth approach would help? At some point, regardless of propaganda, do you believe it just comes down to people being informed and making educated decisions? I do not believe trying drugs will ruin my life, but I've decided that they're not necessary to my life and not worth any sort of risk associated with them, no matter how small. At the end of the day, with scare tactics or exacting facts, will it not similarly come down to folks thinking for themselves and making a choice?

Further, do you see a difference between scare tactics for "lighter" drugs like weed in comparison to heavy drugs like meth? Meth seems to pretty clearly own a universal reputation for being just absolutely terrible. Do you think things such as Faces of Meth help reiterate such a negative consensus, perhaps rightfully?

It is a complicated issue for me and I feel like our generation (late-20s through mid-30s) have a unique perspective on the issue of propaganda and scare tactics as it pertains to drug abuse. We were children of the 80s and that was a time when the War on Drugs went into overdrive and that included weekly tutorials in our elementary schools on the "dangers" of drugs. Nancy Reagan made it her duty to poor tons of money into DARE and programs like it.

Just Say No!
* I love this one, particularly the bit about crack babies... later completely debunked. There were never any crack babies whose lives were ruined due to illicit drug use by parents. Here is a NY Times article discussing the propaganda of "crack babies."

Crack Babies: The Epidemic That Wasn't

Some other PSAs that we grew up with... I can't express just how much we were inundated with this stuff:

Clint Eastwood says, "Take a hike, drug pusher!"

Smoking crack will kill you. Period.


It wasn't just television, the radio, and newspapers, either... In the 1980s, a policeman would come into our classroom and we would have an hour (sometimes longer) of strictly discussing drug users and sellers. Of course, this wasn't an informed conversation filled with facts about the real effects of drugs on most people or the kinds of situations we would really be facing down the road.

They were filled with over-the-top scenarios, discussions of only the absolute extreme cases which may or may not have even had to do with drugs in the first place, and a general "scared straight" approach to stopping drug use. They went at us very early on in our lives, at a point when what adults said was treated as gospel, particularly those in law enforcement.

It was a great case sample of whether or not propaganda really works when it comes to drugs and if scaring people, particularly impressionable kids, would steer them away from drugs later on in life.

The results are in and it isn't pretty. Yeah, it's true... for a long-time I heeded the words of those policemen and thought puffing a joint one-time would turn me into a loser for life. At some point, though, I (and the rest of my generation) discovered that there was nothing serious about those classes and it was mostly a laughable farce, at which point I stopped trusting what authority figures had to say about drugs all together.

The statistics are available and it has become abundently clear that all of the DARE programs and attempted early intervention and all of the federal tax dollars Nancy Reagan funneled into these projects resulted in increased drug-use, year after year, for our Generation Y, which is the children of the 80s.


To me, this "Faces of Meth" is just a variation of a trick law enforcement has been using for years and it is proven not to work. That is the biggest sticking point for me. It isn't about how bad the drug really is or trying to promote drug use. For me, it is about what works versus what doesn't.

We still don't know what works in curbing drug use or at least slowing down its momentum. We know what has failed, though, and this avenue has been a tremendous failure.


Like I said earlier, I would propose real education on the effects of these drugs, both physically and socially. Mind you, I'm not talking about the absolute worst cases or brain scans that try to scare people into never trying it. I'm talking real education. People are going to continue to try drugs at a high rate. It has been that way for a long time in America and will continue to be the case. Meth IS a dangerous drug and should be feared. The truths about the drug are scary enough. There is no need to embellish or take it to a place where even those future addicts among us are never likely to get.

Drugs are here to stay. I think it is time we, as a nation, begin to accept the failed policy of the War on Drugs and start having a legitimately informed discussion on illicit drugs. That way, when these high school or college kids ultimately try drugs (which the vast majority will), they won't come out of it with a total disregard for everything they've been taught, but maybe a better understanding of what they need to do in order to ensure they don't become dependent.

That's just my take on it.

[Rake2204]

It is a complicated issue for me and I feel like our generation (late-20s through mid-30s) have a unique perspective on the issue of propaganda and scare tactics as it pertains to drug abuse. We were children of the 80s and that was a time when the War on Drugs went into overdrive and that included weekly tutorials in our elementary schools on the "dangers" of drugs. Nancy Reagan made it her duty to poor tons of money into DARE and programs like it.

Just Say No!
* I love this one, particularly the bit about crack babies... later completely debunked. There were never any crack babies whose lives were ruined due to illicit drug use by parents. Here is a NY Times article discussing the propaganda of "crack babies."

Crack Babies: The Epidemic That Wasn't

Some other PSAs that we grew up with... I can't express just how much we were inundated with this stuff:

Clint Eastwood says, "Take a hike, drug pusher!"

Smoking crack will kill you. Period.


It wasn't just television, the radio, and newspapers, either... In the 1980s, a policeman would come into our classroom and we would have an hour (sometimes longer) of strictly discussing drug users and sellers. Of course, this wasn't an informed conversation filled with facts about the real effects of drugs on most people or the kinds of situations we would really be facing down the road.

They were filled with over-the-top scenarios, discussions of only the absolute extreme cases which may or may not have even had to do with drugs in the first place, and a general "scared straight" approach to stopping drug use. They went at us very early on in our lives, at a point when what adults said was treated as gospel, particularly those in law enforcement.

It was a great case sample of whether or not propaganda really works when it comes to drugs and if scaring people, particularly impressionable kids, would steer them away from drugs later on in life.

The results are in and it isn't pretty. Yeah, it's true... for a long-time I heeded the words of those policemen and thought puffing a joint one-time would turn me into a loser for life. At some point, though, I (and the rest of my generation) discovered that there was nothing serious about those classes and it was mostly a laughable farce, at which point I stopped trusting what authority figures had to say about drugs all together.

The statistics are available and it has become abundently clear that all of the DARE programs and attempted early intervention and all of the federal tax dollars Nancy Reagan funneled into these projects resulted in increased drug-use, year after year, for our Generation Y, which is the children of the 80s.


To me, this "Faces of Meth" is just a variation of a trick law enforcement has been using for years and it is proven not to work. That is the biggest sticking point for me. It isn't about how bad the drug really is or trying to promote drug use. For me, it is about what works versus what doesn't.

We still don't know what works in curbing drug use or at least slowing down its momentum. We know what has failed, though, and this avenue has been a tremendous failure.


Like I said earlier, I would propose real education on the effects of these drugs, both physically and socially. Mind you, I'm not talking about the absolute worst cases or brain scans that try to scare people into never trying it. I'm talking real education. People are going to continue to try drugs at a high rate. It has been that way for a long time in America and will continue to be the case. Meth IS a dangerous drug and should be feared. The truths about the drug are scary enough. There is no need to embellish or take it to a place where even those future addicts among us are never likely to get.

Drugs are here to stay. I think it is time we, as a nation, begin to accept the failed policy of the War on Drugs and start having a legitimately informed discussion on illicit drugs. That way, when these high school or college kids ultimately try drugs (which the vast majority will), they won't come out of it with a total disregard for everything they've been taught, but maybe a better understanding of what they need to do in order to ensure they don't become dependent.

That's just my take on it.

Thanks for the links. Do you have any others that show a graph of drug use going back further than 2002? Students in school in 2002 going forward surely may have been born in the 80's, but most did not experience the full DARE campaign. I was born in '84 and the only real memory I have is the "This is your brain on drugs" commercial with the frying egg. Otherwise, I was too young to listen and/or comprehend that mid-80's push. I think the same could be said for many, many of those students in school in the mid- to late-00's. So to look at the generation Y link and conclude it was a failure of the DARE campaign doesn't entirely add up for me. A high school senior in 2009 was born in 1991 and likely not sufficiently cognitive to anti-drug messages until the mid- to late- 90's. That's not to say I doubt your correlation. I'm not trying to randomly support DARE at this point, I was just wondering if you had a different link going further back than 2002.

Also, as an educator in an alternative education environment, I think it's worth revealing that we've had numerous "drug talks" at our school and in our classroom over the past four years I've been there. None of them have employed scare tactics. They've usually featured a professional of some sort (either in recovery or in the criminal field) who's primary goal is merely to educate. They're almost always open to Q & A and the students ask hard questions and get real responses.

Through all these discussions, I question their overall effect. As you said, I'm not sure there's been a proven strategy to follow in terms of actively reducing drug use. While Faces of Meth can be received by some as deception, thus pushing them to revolt, sometimes a professional making a statement like, "Yeah, I mean, meth won't kill everyone who tries it" can act as affirmation.

As I mentioned earlier, I think it's just going to come down to people having the ability to think critically for themselves. From the propaganda standpoint, I think we could agree that a person deciding they were going to go ahead and give meth a shot because they found out Faces of Meth was a scare tactic even though they knew it was still a terrible thing to try would be ridiculous logic. Just the same, someone deciding to give meth a shot because an officer detailed its dangers but admitted it wouldn't necessarily kill or destroy everyone who tried it, would be just as stupid. Unfortunately, I think both scenarios occur all the time.

Personally, I think I was positively affected by whatever anti-drug angles I came across as a youngster, whether it was from commercials, school, or my parents. The anti-drug seed was planted early on and when I became old enough to make my own decisions (maybe middle school?) I was able to do my own research and employ my own critical thought in deciding any sort of illegal drugs would be a decision that made absolutely no sense to me. I trust I would have come to this conclusion regardless but realistically, hearing folks say drugs were bad from an early age probably assisted me in my choice. I didn't think I was going to die if I tried them and I didn't think I'd be automatically hooked, I just figured they were something that wasn't worth having in my life. I saw no reason to put myself in the position of having even the tiniest, most remote chance of having things turn out badly as a result of my hypothetical use.