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Amphetamine

Amphetamine (Alpha-Methyl-PHenEThylAMINE), also known as speed, is a synthetic stimulant used to suppress the appetite, control weight, and treat disorders including narcolepsy and Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. It is also used recreationally and for performance enhancement (these uses are illegal in most countries). more...

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Due to the widespread use of amphetamines as a treatment for ADD/ADHD in the USA, they frequently find their way onto the street and are one of the most frequently-abused drugs in high schools and colleges.

Patients with acute toxicity from amphetamines may have symptoms of lock-jaw, diarrhea, palpitations, arrhythmia, syncope, hyperpyrexia, and hyperreflexia progressing to convulsions and coma. Patients with chronic use of amphetamines develop a rapid tolerance to the drug and may have to increase the number of pills to reach a desired affect and eventually develop addiction. Patients that develop addiction show symptoms of restlessness, anxiety, depression, insomnia, and suicidal behavior. A urine drug screen can be performed to determine the presence of amphetamines. Patients may need to be hospitalized. Supportive therapy is important. Cooling blankets may be used for hyperthermia. Sedation may be obtained with lorazepam or diazepam. Haloperidol may be given for agitation and delusions. Hypertension and arrhythmias should be treated.

Pharmacology

Amphetamine is a synthetic drug with strong stimulant effects. In the United States, it is most commonly used for treatment of attention-deficit disorders and narcolepsy, but is also approved as a weight-loss medication in certain cases of obesity. Within the armed forces only, it is also frequently prescribed as an anti-fatigue pill for pilots and other individuals in situations requiring vigilance and alertness. Amphetamine is also used illegally to take advantage of these effects.

The term amphetamine causes a certain amount of confusion because it is often used incorrectly. In the general sense, amphetamine can describe other drugs with similar, stimulant effects, namely methamphetamine and methylphenidate. Chemists often use the term "amphetamine class" to describe chemicals that are structurally similar (and often similar in effect as well) to amphetamine - namely, chemicals with an ethyl backbone, terminal phenyl and amine groups, and a methyl group adjacent to the amine. A large number of chemicals fall into this category, including the club drug MDMA (Ecstasy) and methamphetamine. It is important to note that such an "amphetamine class" does not technically exist. In the pharmacodynamic sense, these drugs all fall under the umbrella of central nervous system stimulants; in the chemical sense, they are phenylethylamines. Amphetamine, for example, is methylated phenylethylamine, and methamphetamine is double-methylated phenylethylamine.

Amphetamine traditionally comes in the salt-form amphetamine sulphate and is comprised of 50% l-amphetamine and 50% d-amphetamine (where l- and d- refer to levo and dextro, the two optical orientations the amphetamine structure can have). In the United States, pharmaceutical products containing solely amphetamine (for example, Biphetamine) are no longer manufactured. Today, dextroamphetamine (d-amphetamine) sulphate is the predominant form of the drug used; it consists entirely of d-isomer amphetamine, which acts in a slightly different way on the brain than does l-amphetamine. Attention disorders are often treated using Adderall or generic-equivalent formulations of mixed amphetamine salts that contain both d/l-amphetamine and d-amphetamine in the sulfate and saccharate forms mixed to a final ratio of 3 parts d-amphetamine to 1 part l-amphetamine.

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Amphetamine psychosis: a delirious take on the latest "new drug of choice" - Rant - "Plague in the Heartland," by Paul Solotaroff criticized
From Reason, 3/1/03 by Nick Gillespie

TIME WAS THAT connoisseurs of drug war propaganda contented themselves with fare such as Reefer Madness, Dragnet reruns featuring acid-eating hippies, and health class films such as 1968's Marijuana, a Just Say No sermonette featuring a curiously red-eyed Sonny Bono.

Now you can cop a fix just by picking up rolling Stone, the self-styled countercultural institution that once upon a time showcased the pharmaceutically fueled writings of America's premier pill popper, Hunter S. Thompson. Rolling Stone's January 23 issue featured the story "Plague in the Heartland," by Paul Solotaroff, the latest entry in a dubious but endlessly rewritten journalistic genre known as the "new drug of choice" story. Depending on the moment, the drug under scrutiny can be marijuana, or cocaine, or heroin, or turpentine, or Ecstasy, or PCP-better known to anyone who ever sat through a Quiann Martin production as "angel dust." This week's special guest villian? Methamphetamine, a.k.a. "crystal meth" and "crank."

All the cliches of the form are on display in "Plague in the Heartland," worn down every bit as smooth as the teeth of a longtime meth fiend. Summary claims to ubiquity, hyper-addictiveness, and national crisis? "Cheap, easy to make and instantly addictive, crystal meth is burning a hole through rural America," avers the story's subtitle. Hyperbolic claims of uniquely intoxicating effects? "The chemical equivalent of ten orgasms at once," swears a doctor. The revelation that this crisis is really about--egad!--the white middle class? "These aren't no-tooth yokels from trailer parks," reports the police chief of Granite Falls, Washington, where the story is mostly set. "They're kids whose moms and dads work at Boeing."

Exoticized, sinister dealers who don't care about the effects of what they're selling and who wrap themselves in the Constitution to boot? Solotaroff, with a police guard, walks up to a notorious meth-cooking site and interrogates a white-cooking site and interrogates a white-trash specimen who is equal parts Deliverance technical consultant and ZZTop roadie: "He has broad logger's shoulders, a chest-length beard and eyes that dart from side to side, pulsing in their sockets." After being accused of manufacturing meth, the frenk indignantly produces a glass pipe and thunders: "You see this? I made this. I'm an American citizen who makes pipes...As for what people smoke in them, that's their deal. Their right as American citizens!"

Then there are the uncorroborated tales of horrible deeds done while high. "Plague in the Heartland" adds two new chapters to that infinite anthology, which already boasts such classic hoaxes as the college kids so whacked on LSD that they went blind staring at the sun and the wigged-out babysitters who cooked infants. Via the police chief, we learn of "the tweakers (as meth users are known) who clubbed to death seventeen newborn calves" and "the boy, high out of his mind, who fancied his thick skull bulletproof and blew much of it off with a .25."

And finally, there's the omission that fully seals the deal: actual hard evidence of increasing and wide-spread use, as opposed to increased police activity and a spike in emergency room admissions "linked" to the drug (a measure that is notoriously subjective and ambiguous).

The latest stats released by federal drug warriors-who have every reason to exaggerate the use and abuse of drugs, since the bigger the crisis, the bigger their budget--tell a far less incendiary tale about meth use. Data from the 2001 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse indicate that a whopping 0.6 percent of Americans 12 years and older had done meth in the previous year; past-month use came in at 0.3 percent. Those figures were virtually unchanged from 2000. In "nonmetro" counties, past-month use of all drugs was 5.8% in 2001, up from 5.1% in 2000.

If anything, those numbers tell the sort of story that you used to expect from Rolling Stone, the one about how drug warriors co-opt the media and blame the mayhem surrounding the illegal drug trade on a substance's mythically evil attributes rather than its black-market status.

Nick Gillespie (gillespie@reason.com) is reason's editor-in-chief.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Reason Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group

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