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Commentary: We must confront the rise in methamphetamine use now

Austin American-Statesman - 2/19/2020

Resources in the fight against drug addiction rightly have been focused on the devastating opioid epidemic in recent years. But it's critical that we not ignore the next great addiction threat -- methamphetamines.

Some call it the "fourth wave of the opioid crisis." The first wave started in the late 1990s with a proliferation of prescription opioids. The second wave arrived in 2010 when, after a crackdown in opioid prescriptions, people realized heroin was easier to get.

The third wave in 2013 brought an increase in overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids, particularly fentanyl. In 2017, opioid-related overdoses killed 70,000 people. That's more people than died in car crashes that year.

The fourth wave of increased methamphetamine use has already started. The rate for deaths involving psychostimulants increased almost five-fold from 2012 to 2018, according to a report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In Texas, "methamphetamine has now surpassed heroin in many indicators and is now the primary public health problem in Texas," the National Drug Early Warning System reported in 2018.

Meth use is not a new phenomenon. Restrictions on the sale of key ingredients to produce methamphetamine and a law enforcement crackdown on makeshift cooking labs helped combat the meth epidemic in the 2000s. But now Mexican drug cartels have filled the void with cheap, potent meth.

There are differences between meth and opioids. Opioids relax the body and depress breathing; methamphetamine supplies a rush, increasing blood pressure and heartbeat. But another key difference is that, unlike opioids, there are no medications to treat the cravings of a meth addiction or reverse the effects of meth-related overdoses.

This is where institutions like University of North Texas Health Science Center (UNTHSC), with innovative public health, pharmacological and research components, can help -- much like we have helped in the fight against opioid overdoses.

Just last month, UNTHSC began a large-scale distribution of 9,000 doses of Naloxone and offered training to students, employees and community members on how to use the opioid-overdose reversal medication to save lives. A new on-campus pharmacy opening this year also will offer Naloxone to anyone who requests it.

A UNTHSC Regents Professor, Dr. Scott Walters, last year accepted a leadership role in a landmark $350 million study that will implement, test and evaluate a set of proven prevention and treatment strategies to reduce opioid deaths in 67 hard-hit communities in the United States. Leaders in those communities are already sounding the alarm about a rise in methamphetamine use.

By committing resources now to create new ways of preventing and treating methamphetamine use, to increase monitoring and develop new medications to curb addiction cravings and reverse the effects of overdoses, we can halt this fourth wave of addiction before it overwhelms our communities.

The opioid crisis has been a scourge on our society for 20 years. We must not allow methamphetamine to replace it.

Dr. Williams is president of University of North Texas Health Science Center.

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