Within the past decade, a cheaper form of methamphetamine, P2P, has been created in Mexico with the help of biker gangs and local organic chemists. P2P has been mass cooked and distributed from Mexico to all over the United States. This new form of meth causes side effects of deteriorating, severe mental illness such as P2P-induced psychosis, schizophrenia, and severe cerebral damage.
Addicts of P2P mental health has been seen to be instantaneously deteriorating within hours of use, referring to hallucinations, delusions, and simply psychotic behavior. This new superdrug now readily available on the streets has caused addicts to turn to psychotic desperation to have more.
New York Times opinion writer, Jay Caspian Kang, explains his belief that this single drug has caused the entire homelessness crisis in his blog, “Is Our Homelessness Crisis Really a Drug Problem?” by stating that “battling homelessness requires us to confront rampant drug addiction…” by not throwing all drug addicts in jail.
Taking all the homeless people on the streets who are drugged up on P2P (or something else) and incarcerating them will not be a simple solution to solving the homelessness crisis. In the blog, Kang stated that P2P causes paranoid, erratic people to walk the streets which inevitably causes more police shootings. This could be shown through the larger amount of police shootings in the city of Albuquerque after the spread of P2P in the city.
In general, being inside a homeless center, Skid Row, or walking around Kensington will open one’s eyes to the psychosis and mental health deterioration that P2P causes as the supply of the drug is increasing around these areas. This superdrug that is heavily contributing to the homelessness crisis in America could be helped by closer monitoring of the supply of this drug as well as being open to providing rehabilitation resources for these addicts.
Criminalizing the possession of these drugs will not fix the homelessness or drug crisis in the United States.
“Meth and paraphernalia (above) inside a tent on Skid Row, in Los Angeles. The area encompasses about 50 square blocks of the city; tents (below) line many of its streets. (Rachel Bujalski for The Atlantic)” – Picture taken from The Atlantic
Further on this topic, Sam Quinones’s blog on The Atlantic, further explains the history behind the creation and spread of this new form of methamphetamine and explores the impact this has on the homelessness crisis.
Quinones interviews two former P2P addicts who state that they needed to relearn how to speak and it took over a year to recover from the severe brain damage the drug had caused. The abundance and low price of the drug has been causing more and more users to become addicted to the drug, especially in a time of desperation such as dealing with homelessness.
The meth crisis in Los Angeles has rarely come up in civic discussions because people treat it as the “Elephant in the room” which no one wants to mention. Legislators would rather talk about the price of housing rather than stigmatizing the homeless as drug users, however, this topic should definitely be talked about more in city conversations.
Quinones interestingly compares the tents on Skid Row to a physical retreat from the world where they can find approval in their use of methamphetamine. Also, the addiction to P2P can also be related to alcoholism, in a way where both substances are widely available and abundant, while both being very hard to quit.
The reason why this link from the meth crisis to the homelessness crisis is so invisible to the American public is because media is more focused on the opioid crisis which kills much more people than meth. Again, the main reason why the meth crisis has gotten so bad is because of an increasing supply being distributed to, quite literally, everywhere.
Overall, the continuing homelessness crisis can be attributed to the abundance of a newer, cheaper drug, P2P methamphetamine, as well as the ongoing opioid crisis and other synthetic drugs such as fentanyl. Rather than throwing all addicts in jail for possession of an illegal substance, the more helpful solution would be to provide rehabilitation services for addicts and lead them to recovery.