Author and journalist Sam Quinones hypotesizes in his book, The Least of Us, that a significant part of the increase in homelessness is due to a change in methamphetamine quality.
Prior to about 2010, meth was manufactured in Mexico using high quality precursors. The government cracked down on imports, and cartels started using a much more dirty P2P manufacturing methods, which is anecdotally associated with vastly higher levels of disruptive psychosis.
This is completely anecdotal, but contemporary accounts of the Haight Ashbury following the Summer of Love tell the story of a movement that started out on acid, moved on to speed, and became far more violent and filled with squalor because of it. Much like what is happening today.
“[1] Even among drug-using Haight-Ashbury subcultures, the high-dose methamphetamine abuser was marginalized, but became increasingly visible and unavoidable because of violence associated with dealing methamphetamine and because of the users' hyperactivity and paranoia.”
In this telling, there's also a huge increase in supply since then- 1980s biker meth was relatively artisinal, but the current situation involves large and professional factories in Mexico.
True, but at least in the 60’s and 70’s most stimulants were legitimate medications. Amphetamine, dextroamphetamine and methamphetamine were widely prescribed and diverted into illegal channels.
There was a “scourge” of truckers taking uppers and driving all night. Stimulant use was really rampant across all social classes. Use decreased when prescriptions were cut off, then meth resurged in the 90’s.
And the other data point is methamphetamine use is the drug of choice in much of Asia. But you don’t see anywhere near the social problems you do in the US.
Could be that that biker meth was also as bad. Could be differences in recipes/precursors/equipment as p2p can be made from hundreds of different ingredients.
I wonder if there are data sets tracking drug impurities that could test the hypothesis.
Prior to about 2010, meth was manufactured in Mexico using high quality precursors. The government cracked down on imports, and cartels started using a much more dirty P2P manufacturing methods, which is anecdotally associated with vastly higher levels of disruptive psychosis.
He talked about it in an episode of Econ Talk.
https://www.econtalk.org/sam-quinones-on-meth-fentanyl-and-t...