CYBERPUNK: Crank It Up

You know, some things are just too damn funny. Like, for instance, how Congress recently buried legislation designed to curb the proliferation of methamphetamine deep within the Bankruptcy Reform Act. The anti-drug bill started as a standalone thing in the Senate, but evidently it was having difficulty withstanding constitutional scrutiny. So, like some kid hiding his stash from his parents, Congress snuck the bill in some other House legislation, hoping we wouldn't notice. Oy!

The one thing I do know is that methamphetamine certainly ought to be illegal. It's horrid stuff. It'll rot your mind and reduce you to blathering idiocy. Oddly enough, my own introduction to the substance came indirectly from my involvement with the government, when I was in the U.S. Army in the early '80s. The stuff was rife at Fort Riley, Kan., where I was assigned to the First Infantry Division. The base must have been at the far end of the supply chain of all those legendary California biker meth labs.

Of course, we never called it "methamphetamine." I'm not sure what today's drug-addled kids call it, but in my day it was known as "crank." And many of my fellow soldiers found crank to be a perfect way to pass the time until the next war broke out. It certainly helped keep us trailer-trash enlisted types partying until daylight. Crank produces a wired kick that is to a cocaine high as a Night Train drunk is to the buzz from a bottle of expensive chablis. Which is to say that it's basically the same kind of puppy upper but leaves you feeling a lot more gnarly around the edges. Stick your rolled-up bill into these crystals and you'll end up jabbering away about stuff you know absolutely nothing about for hours and hours and hours -- when you're not fighting the urge to break stuff, that is. And coming down from this dopamine rush is like discovering a new ring in Dante's Inferno.

Here's the problem for the feds: Crank is to the drug world what the Internet is to the entertainment world -- easily accessible, enjoyed everywhere. Methamphetamine can be made anywhere in the country, and on the cheap. According to July 6 congressional testimony from the Drug Enforcement Administration administrator Donnie Marshall, "Aside from marijuana, methamphetamine is the only illegal drug abused by a noteworthy percentage of the population that an addict can produce themselves [sic]." Marshall also reported that meth-related emergency-room visits tripled nationwide from 1991 to 1997.

So it's not surprising that Congress is pursuing legislation to combat this growth industry. The meth bill -- or, rather Title XVII of the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2000 -- promises more money to bust meth labs and treat addicts. But it goes a step further -- proposing to bar posting instructions on how to make methamphetamine on the Internet, or even linking to that information from other pages.

From the government's perspective, this makes perfect sense: Ban the spread of the recipe, less of the stuff gets made, the DEA's job gets a little easier. From the vantage point of the rest of the country, however, it's government censorship, a blatant abridgement of free-speech rights. There's a subtle but important difference between granting an agency the authority to fight drugs and denying the rights of everyone else to discuss these drugs. The former aims to curtail wrongdoing; the latter aims to curtail whatever the government suspects might lead to wrongdoing. We're setting the precedent of infringing on the rights of many to stop the actions of a few.

If meth recipes are posted for all to see, will some people go for home brewing? Yup. But some folks are merely curious about how it's made, or what's in it, and their curiosity will be outlawed. And this is troublesome. For instance, take a look through the reader comments at The Lycaeum, a volunteer-run clearinghouse of drug info that includes a methamphetamine FAQ, and you'll discover that, law-enforcement officials' claims notwithstanding, you can't exactly whip up a batch of crank in the tub. Even if you do manage to get ahold of the key component, red phosphorus (which somehow must be obtained from watchful chemical companies), you'd still have to spend days cooking it up, hoping all along not to blow yourself up. Not exactly a feasible project for the casual street pharmacist or the brain-charred speed freak, and slightly more difficult than Donnie Marshall would have Congress believe -- if, that is, you are more willing to take Lycaeum at its word than the DEA.

But once sites likes Lycaeum are forced offline, we won't have any choice but to take the DEA at its word. And do you really want to put your trust in some law that had to be snuck through the legislative process, secretly, like a drug shipment crossing the border in the middle of the night?

E-mail: joabj@charm.net.