Thursday, July 28, 2005

Tweakers, tokers, hillbillys, and Mrs. Sanders

Martha calls a halt to meth lab posts, but it's important to note that today's tweaker is yesterday's toker and last week's moonshine hillbilly.

I submit:

My youthful indiscretions circa 1987 or so seem so innocent in the waning light of my memory. Nowadays, though, hitting the 7-11 to buy two cases of wooden matches so's you could chop the tips off, pack them in a medicine vial along with assorted nuts and bolts, and have yourself a pipe bomb to blow up Ole Man Willis' mailbox could land you in Git-mo.

Our kiddie assembly line never got this far, but one gent in Chattanooga, Tenn, bought 75,000 books of matches in a two-week period and tipped his lye-stained hand to the local cops: he's looking to be cooking up some blue-collar coke to make Jeff Foxworthy proud.

"Moonshiners when from moonshine to marijuana, from marijuana to meth," said top cop Ricky Smith. He contests that many meth manufacturers can directly trace their lineage to makers of illegal alcohol.

In the World Peace Herald's two-part investigation of the meth crisis, all the facts are present:
-- Truckers use it to keep alert whilst hauling Huggies
-- Ingredients include some of the same toxins as a Marlboro: lye, paint thinner camp fuel, ether, battery lithium
-- Meth was reportedly used by Japanese kamikaze pilots and U.S. soldiers during WWII to stay away while slaughtering each other.

But we often forget the upside, as Ms. Sanders will relate: "When I first started doing it, I was up for about four days, I could clean the house, take care of the kids, we had a spotless house, I did all the laundry, I ironed the curtains, I was like a supermom," said Charlotte Sanders.

Billy Hadden, 35, recovering super-tweaker, says, "It's like taking a 24-hour day and turning it into a 30-hour day."

If that's so Billy, why don't you help Charlotte around the house once in a while.