Methamphetamine

Brief History

Meth is a derivative of the chemical known as ephedrine. Ephedrine is a stimulant that activates various receptors in the brain, providing a period of increased energy. The history of meth is one that mirrors others in the amphetamine family. First synthesized in 1893 by the Japanese chemist Nagai Nagayoshi, meth is a derivative of methyl alphamethylohenylethylamine. Meth is not naturally crystallized but was turned into a solid by another Japanese pharmacologist, Akira Ogata, via reduction of ephedrine using red phosphorus and iodine.

Meth was a popular drug during the Second World War. Notably, both Allied and Axis forces used meth to provide energy to pilots flying long missions. Hitler might have been a user of liquid meth to treat his Parkinson's disease. In a three-month period in 1940, 35 million 3-milligram doses were distributed to the German military. After World War II, a large surplus of meth existed, and its use spread rapidly to the civilian population. Japan had one of the largest surpluses and thus suffered one of the first meth epidemics. This epidemic spread to the U.S.-controlled islands in the Pacific and eventually to the West Coast of the United States.

Modern use of meth is varied, depending on the country's laws. In the United States, meth only had two approved medicinal uses, one being for treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and the other for exogenous obesity. However, illegal use of meth rose steadily during the 1970s and 1980s but has steadily declined since the late 1980s. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, use of the drug among urban males increased, and the drug became a “party drug” especially among the homosexual populations of large urban centers. Motorcycle gangs had been using amphetamines since the early 1960s. One of the early names for meth was “crank” because many gang members hid the drugs in their motorcycle's crankcase. By the 1980s, much of the domestic production of meth came from the West Coast motorcycle gangs. The drug quickly spread to rural areas of the American Midwest and South. By the mid-1980s, Mexican drug cartels supplanted the motorcycle gangs in meth production; the gangs became transporters and distributors of Mexican-produced meth.

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