Zagorski says this is likely contributing to the increase in meth use, but overall it is a “relatively minor” factor, with economic uncertainty and housing instability doing far more to exacerbate the crisis.
Nikki Mehtani, an assistant professor in the UCSF Division of General Internal Medicine at San Francisco General Hospital, who specializes in addiction medicine and does clinical work with homeless people, tells WIRED that P2P meth is nothing new. “It’s been the dominant form in the American supply for the better part of a decade,” she says. “I’ve never heard it called ‘super meth’ in any clinical or scientific context, probably because it’s the same meth we’ve all been seeing for years. There’s nothing new or uniquely ‘super’ about it at this point.”
Mehtani says that due to the lack of FDA-approved pharmacotherapies, meth use disorder is extremely difficult to treat, and “recovery is really hard.” But she says Pratt’s story misses the root causes of meth use among people experiencing homelessness. “The most common reason I hear is functional,” says Mehtani. “People are using stimulants to stay awake, maintain alertness, survive on the streets at a time of increasing criminalization of poverty and homelessness.”
“Calling it ‘super meth’ obscures it all and turns a complex public health problem into a moral panic, pushing us toward punitive responses and away from evidence-based interventions that actually help,” warns Mehtani. She considers this phrase “classic War on Drugs language”, describing it as “vague, worrisome, and not based on the way physicians or researchers actually talk about methamphetamine.”
Ryan Marino, an associate professor in the department of emergency medicine and psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine who specializes in addiction and toxicology, says the “super meth” claims are part of a broader propaganda campaign. (Pratt has also called homeless people “zombies”.)
Marino says, “It seems like Pratt is trying to use the same right-wing drug lies that we’ve seen other politicians use in recent years in areas like San Francisco and Portland, which were lies at the time and have actually led to worse outcomes for those places.” In Oregon, recriminalizing small amounts of drug possession has not reduced homelessness in the city of Portland, where more people are homeless than ever before, while research from several cities has shown a strong link between opioid busts by police and overdose deaths.
“Los Angeles is not particularly worse off with drug problems than places governed by Republicans or with stricter drug criminalization,” says Marino. Pratt’s line about homeless people wanting drugs instead of beds and shelter “contradicts all available evidence,” he says, noting that drug use “is not the cause of L.A.’s large unhoused population.”
If Pratt is truly concerned about illicit drug use and homelessness, she should advocate for evidence-based solutions such as “public education, drug testing facilities and supervised consumption centers, and regulation of drug supply”, as well as “drug treatment, access to mental health care, and housing.”
However, the candidate probably won’t go that route. Pratt is currently polling in second place behind Bass, after months of shaming non-homeless people and mocking the initiative to help them recover from drug addiction.
The frequently heard “super meth” sound, no matter how fake, makes it seem as if they are in the grip of something so powerful that it is not possible to counteract it by civil or medical means. And maybe that’s exactly the point: convincing Los Angeles voters that the city’s most vulnerable residents are a hopeless cause.
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