While many things make a comeback in life, such as certain types of music or fashion, one product many assumed was gone for good was meth. Unfortunately, as the US plunges itself into a deep opioid crisis and shows no signs of coming out of it, methamphetamines are making a brutal comeback to the streets of the United States. This is happening all across the country, but particularly in smaller rural parts of the US.

It’s happening everywhere, though. From the sunshine states like Virginia and Florida to the snow states like Alaska meth is found just about everywhere. This is, according to those on the ground, as big a rise in use as we’ve seen since the spike that came in the 1990s. While government action such as the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2006 proved useful, we’re beginning to see a massive spike again – with most of it coming from Mexico, according to reports.

Massive drug cartels are sending out insane quantities of the drug, and are selling it as massive amounts across the United States. These drugs are testing at around 95-99% purity, and is known as “ice” or “crystal” in the eyes of many. It’s become so much more powerful and is also much cheaper than the 1990s stuff, meaning that parts of the country are utterly flooded with met.

Indeed, overdoses in Oklahoma have more than doubled in the last five years purely from meth use. It’s become a major problem, and has been growing at staggering rates. Indeed, in Alaska there has been a fourfold increase in the use of meth across the country. Florida is much the same. These problems are not going to go anytime soon, either, with meth becoming the second leading drug of choice used across places like SW Virginia.

What can be done to halt the growth of meth usage?

It’s hard to say – the cops are doing everything that they can. Border seizures of the stuff have gone up an incredible 500%, in a decade, meaning that there is much more that the cops are doing to try and stop the flow. However, it’s often going into places like Atlanta, where it can be funnelled into smaller communities whereby there is less resource and opportunity to handle the problem.

Today an ounce of meth costs around $450 – and that’s the higher end of the price chain. Six years ago, that would have cost you around $1100. This is making it much more viable and accessible, which creates a huge problem for law enforcement. Even in places like Alaska, where cartels skyrocket the prices due to lack of competition, meth is the cheapest it’s been for some time.

This is going to be a huge problem, and with the Opioid Crisis Response Act of 2018 now in place, it’s going to need to work quickly to try and put an end to this major problem. As an epidemic the US thought it had seen the back of, it’s time to finally admit that meth is back and in a bad, bad way.