Comment by cwkoss

RE: Quantity section. I wonder if the pharmaceutical amphetamines and/or novel 'research chemical' amphetamines metabolize into the same compounds that are being quantified in sewage. Are they detecting 'meth' specifically or amphetamines generally?

> only $1k per pound now.

Wow that's crazy. An equivalent quantity of generic adderall would cost ~$20k. Meth is effectively at commodity-level prices, if true - the drug war premium seems gone.

I'm skeptical about overdose rates being attributed to meth. Meth is fairly hard to OD on - it'll ruin your life and brain, but rarely kills acutely. I suspect meth being used as an adulterant mixed with other drugs (esp opioids), or novel non-meth psychostimulants, play a significant role in the increase of psychostimulant ODs by ~9x over the last 10 years.

I think a lot of this data is getting mixed up with the (at the time quasi-legal) pyrovalerones and cathinones that were widely available through the clearnet over the past 5 years. Those have much greater acute risks and were highly accessible to people without drug connections.

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However, I'm skeptical of the initial premise of the article:

> Ephedrine meth was like a party drug. […] You could normally kind of more or less hang onto your life. You had a house, you had a job. […] P2P meth was nothing like that. It was a very sinister drug.

Tweakers have been around for decades, I suspect this is just misleading anecdata.