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- <text id=89TT2449>
- <title>
- Sep. 18, 1989: The Menace Of Ice
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- Sep. 18, 1989 Torching The Amazon
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- NATION, Page 28
- The Menace of Ice
- </hdr><body>
- <p> Even as the U.S. struggles with crack cocaine, a more
- chilling drug has appeared: "ice." Like crack, ice is not a new
- drug but a smokable version of an old one -- crystallized
- methamphetamine, better known as "crystal meth" and speed during
- the 1960s and '70s, when it was usually taken as pills or
- injected. In Hawaii, where the smokable version first appeared
- this year, it is sold in $50 cellophane packets that contain
- about a tenth of a gram, good for one or two hits. But smoking
- ice provides a high for eight hours or more, compared with less
- than 30 minutes for crack. It shares crack's addictive
- properties and produces similar bouts of severe depression and
- paranoia, as well as convulsions.
- </p>
- <p> Ice has already become the No. 1 drug problem in Hawaii,
- where it is smuggled in from illegal labs in South Korea and
- the Philippines. Methamphetamine produced in California, Oregon
- and Texas is already making serious inroads across the U.S. The
- frustrating prospect is that if the effort to stop the cocaine
- flow from Latin America makes crack harder to get, users will
- simply shift to easily available speed. Jubilant would-be speed
- kings from Portland to Dallas are already making plans for vast
- expansions in production.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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