Comment by nswango

The original Atlantic article, which this one is trying to refute, also doesn't present any evidence for the theory that 'new meth' has significant different effects on health.

After a fact dump about different types of meth, it's literally a collection of anecdotal evidence from meth users going "for the first 5 years of smoking weekly, I had a great time partying in a relaxed way with my best buds, now that I've lost my job, partner, family and home and smoke daily my mental health is fucked up".

And people working in drug care and enforcement saying "when a few rich hedonists would spend $60 for the next level high, it didn't cause schizophrenia. Now that we have thousands of former crack and opiate addicts living in tents injecting $10 bags three times a day it seems to be contaminated with something that causes detachment from reality."

The literal two most common and evergreen things in drug culture are users claiming that the old stuff was much better and would deliver a clean high without addiction for barely any money, and cops claiming that the old users were better, gentlemen fiends who did not sell their bodies or rob and exploit their own families, never bit or stabbed you when being arrested, and did not soil themselves or set fire to their own clothes while in custody.