Ice Ain't Nice: A Cautionary Drug Tale

In mid-October, Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards decided to make methamphetamine a focus of his stump speeches in the Midwest.

"Methamphetamine has become a cancer in rural areas and small towns in this country," he told reporters via conference call just after a rally in Newton, Iowa. He then launched into a list of things that John Kerry and he would do if elected: increase law enforcement budgets, make it harder for people to get bulk quantities of cold remedies and diet aids that contain the chemicals needed to manufacture meth, and increase funding for education and treatment. The Bush camp responded that they have increased the number of meth lab busts during the president's term and supports expanding federal drug courts to deal with meth use and abuse.

Whether either camp is actually in touch with the issue is in question. But it is an issue, and it may be on its way to becoming a bigger one.

"About two or three years ago we began to see a change in attitude on the dance floor," says Dr. Chris Mann, founder of MedEvent, a volunteer organization whose members attend large public gatherings around the country and watch for people who are having bad drug reactions. "The Ecstasy crowd was a lovey-dovey, huggy sort of crowd. This crowd is angry, pissy, aggressive. That changes the attitude of the social environment."

The crowd Dr. Mann is talking about uses "ice," a highly refined methamphetamine that's pure enough to smoke, and is often done in social settings, with people passing around the pipe. A lot of the work MedEvent is asked to do is at gay dance clubs, where there has traditionally been some drug use for heightened sexual pleasure. "The change we saw with the introduction of ice into the scene was very apparent," says Mann, a professor of sports medicine at the University of North Texas Health Science Center.

Mann's position with MedEvent gives him a unique perspective on drug trends, whether in gay dance clubs or at large sporting events. He says that most people in social settings deal well with the drugs they've taken. They're dancing, after all, or focused on the sports event. But ice, he says, is different.

"People have short tempers when they're on it, and they're very sexually aggressive. ... And where with meth you might be high for 4-6 hours, with this you're high 10-12 hours and it's several times stronger than meth."

Even for people who are accustomed to using meth, he says, ice is often a problem. "It just seems to take people over like nothing I've ever seen. They can maintain their lives for years with meth, but with this they forget about their jobs, their families, everything. The only thing that matters is ice. I've talked with chemists and medical people and even people who make it, but no one has been able to explain why this is so much stronger. It just is."

What's particularly worrisome, he says, is that during the last six or eight months he's been seeing it integrating into the straight clubs, "and those people have no idea what they're in for when they do this. The straight crowd isn't doing a lot of meth anyway, so it comes right out of left field for them. And that's going to cause some problems for people."

"Odds are the stuff will never come your way," says John L., a former speed freak and ice cook who lives in Pennsylvania. "On the other hand, if it does you're better off saying 'no thanks' than messing with it. Because if you do, odds are you are going to find yourself in a battle you're not going to win."

John moved to Pennsylvania from the Midwest to get away from the crowd he hung with after he was released from prison in 2001. "What helped me get clean after 25 years was just getting fed up with the life. I figured I was hitting 50 and it was time to grow up, that's all."