The Badger in the Room

by Peter DelVecchio

The presidential campaign is now in full swing, but none of the candidates are really talking about meth. Yes, of course there are bigger issues. The wars. Energy. Health care. Unemployment. Four-dollar gasoline. The name of the fabulously talented funeral director who did Sen. John McCain’s makeup for his acceptance speech at the Republican convention. (OK, I made that last one up, but don’t you want to know?)

So meth might not be the proverbial elephant in the room that everyone’s pretending not to see. But it is a bigger issue than it might at first seem to be. It’s at least, say, a badger, and here’s why:

Meth isn’t just an addiction problem, although that would be bad enough; it’s also a health and public safety issue.

For one thing, Tina and HIV are twisted sisters. “[M]ethamphetamine use has been linked with increased numbers of HIV infections in some populations,” primarily, but not exclusively, men who have sex with men (MSM), according to a fact sheet from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The rate of HIV diagnoses among MSM spiked by 8.6 percent between 2001 and 2006, according to a CDC report released in June, fueled, at least in part by meth. In August, the CDC announced it had been unwittingly underreporting the annual rate of new HIV infections in the United States by approximately 40 percent for years, and that, for example, 56,300 Americans became infected with HIV in 2006, not 40,000, as the CDC had previously estimated.

Then, there’s crime and the other social costs of meth. For example, the area around Republican vice-presidential candidate and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s town of Wasilla—where she was mayor before becoming governor—is, according to the Alaska State Troopers, the methamphetamine capital of Alaska, The Associated Press reported Sept. 4. Authorities busted 42 meth labs in the area last year, up from nine in 2003. Worse, Tina’s victims are often kids; Wasilla’s Office of Children’s Services receives about 40 reports each month of meth-related child abuse or neglect.

It wouldn’t be fair to blame Palin for all this without more evidence. One might, though, expect a self-styled paragon of hockey mommery living in the midst of such violence and misery being visited upon children to perhaps use her new national bully pulpit to at least raise meth as an issue.

But let’s not single out Palin—Tina’s certainly wreaking havoc in Sen. Barack Obama’s Illinois, McCain’s Arizona and Sen. Joe Biden’s Delaware, too, and their silence has been as complete as hers, and for considerably longer.

But I guess I should wake up and smell the moose turds. With burning issues like American flag lapel pins, seditious fist-bumps and conditions at the Hanoi Hilton circa 1968, who has time to talk about meth?

Paris, are you still in the race?

Peter DelVecchio is a reporter for IN Los Angeles magazine and an attorney. He is also writing a book about his experiences with meth.