Amphetamine use: crystal gazing into the new millennium: Part One - what is driving the demand?

Abstract

The use of amphetamine has an unusual and somewhat ambiguous history. Starting out as a legal synthetic cure-all for many common ailments, it seems to have been espoused by the medical fraternity in the 1930s as enthusiastically as Prozac in the 1990s. Later evidence of associated psychoses led to legislation that terminated its role as an easy therapeutic option, but public demand still persisted which at first was met through the diversion of prescribed drugs. Better control removed this route which was then largely replaced by entrepreneurs offering the products of small, clandestine laboratories using cookbook recipes. Though subject to fluctuations - with a peak in the 'swinging sixties' - the popularity of amphetamine in the UK has never waned. This is, perhaps, because it is still regarded as harmless by consumers, a view presumably shared by many doctors and politicians, since there has been little apparent concern from them ever since. That is, until very recently. In the mid-1990s a surprisingly vigorous interest was shown by the United Nations (Drugs Control Programme) in the increasing manufacture, trafficking and use of amphetamine world-wide. This was taken up by the World Health Organization and expert meetings rapidly arranged. The general view was that the long-lasting preoccupation with heroin and cocaine was responsible for the lack of concern or awareness of these developments by national governments. This paper offers some observations on the changing patterns of amphetamine use and reactions to them in the countries implicated. It looks into the future by extrapolating from past performance, prevailing attitudes and changing social norms to try to second guess the nature of the trials and tribulations ahead.