Sycophants of Psuedo-Science
While checking Twitter this morning I nearly spit out a mouthfull of coffee when I saw an update from the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) conference in Washington D.C. - Sam Quinones was given the ASAM Media Award for excellence in journalism. For those unfamiliar with his work, Quinones is the author of such books as 2015’s “Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opioid Epidemic” and more recently, 2021’s “The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth”. The “True Tales” that Quinones presents in his books are well written narratives that are fine, I guess. It’s the conclusions Quinones often draws from the tales of his subjects where things get a little wacky.
I recall a Zoom call I was on a few years ago on which Quinones was slated to speak about his new book (“The Least of These”) and his ideas about how we can end the “drug epidemic” in our country. On a planning call prior, Quinones had rebuked requests to use person-centered language rather than words like “addict”, “meth head”, “junkie”, to say “sex work” rather than “prostitution”, and so on. He was very clear that he would say what he wanted regardless of the potential effect it had on others, exuding that white-guy-who-knows-everything-and-won’t-fucking-stop-talking energy in a manner that many of us are all too familiar with. But when he presented his ideas on how we got to where we are with drugs, I forgot all about the language he was using.
In Quinones’s words (or close to them), we need to “turn jails and prisons into treatment centers and make IVCs (involuntary commitments) easier for loved ones to place a struggling addict somewhere safe where they can’t kill themselves with drugs”. But why would Quinones want to have such a thing done? What scourge is so terrible that we must save drug users from themselves through incarceration, which I can attest is no picnic? “It’s ‘cause the meth is different now, and people are using it with fentanyl, which is extremely powerful,” Quinones explained. His arguement went like this:
From 2004-2009 it became increasingly difficult for the cartels as well as local meth cooks to get ephedrine to make their meth due to increasing regulation and bans on the sale of the drug. Having lost access to their precursor of choice, cartels began to use a “new” method to make meth using a chemical called phenyl-2-propanone or P2P. Whereas the ephedrine-based meth produced a product that was all d-methamphetamine (the stuff people want, euphoric, gives you energy, etc.), the P2P-based meth produced both d and l-methamphetamine (the stuff you don’t want, increases heart-rate, can make users paranoid, etc.). …AND… (not his exact words, but you get the idea) “It was this P2P meth that was responsible for all the homelessness and tent cities we’re seeing pop up, the increase in crazy people who will not go to treatment because the meth’s got ‘em going nuts…” it was a really unhinged argument that told me little except for that this guy and his ideas could be really harmful, and the latter are not based in any solid knowledge of drugs, drug users, chemistry, or the criminal justice system.
See, as soon as cartels began making P2P meth, they began to develop methods to get rid of the l-methamphetamine in their product. This takes a $4,000 peice of equipment (or you can make one) and a bit of knowledge, yet Quinones described it as “really complicated process” that cartels would shirk in order to make more profit. This is not based in any facts, he just says it, seemingly to bolster his argument. Because if it isn’t the drugs, why are all these tent cities popping up or whatever, right?
The fact that Quinones can unironically be awarded for excellence in journalism while his work is filled with holes and assumptions lets me know where we are in truly changing the way our society sees drugs and treats drug users - and we got a lonnnnnnnnnnnnng way to go. But in a jounalistic landscape littered with “ZOMBIE FLESH-EATING DRUG” headlines, I guess it makes sense that we crown someone of Quinones’s pedigree as king…