{"id":43963,"date":"2013-06-21T08:27:28","date_gmt":"2013-06-21T07:27:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/nazis-used-meth-5-things-to-know-about-one-of-the-worlds-favorite-stimulants\/43963\/"},"modified":"2013-06-21T08:27:28","modified_gmt":"2013-06-21T07:27:28","slug":"nazis-used-meth-5-things-to-know-about-one-of-the-worlds-favorite-stimulants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/nazis-used-meth-5-things-to-know-about-one-of-the-worlds-favorite-stimulants\/","title":{"rendered":"Nazis Used Meth? 5 Things to Know About One of the World's Favorite Stimulants"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n <\/p>\n
\n
\n

Photo Credit: shutterstock.com<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

June 14, 2013<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>
\n<\/em> \u00a0| <\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

Like this article?<\/p>\n

Join our email list:<\/p>\n

Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email.<\/h3>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n\t <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

As one who writes in defense of recreational \u201chard\u201d drug users, I am frequently irked by the anti-drug sensationalism presented in supposedly objective news articles. An example is the recent front-page article in the Huffington Post, \u201c Nazis Took \u2018Meth\u2019 Pills to Stay Alert, Boost Endurance During World War II, Letters Reveal<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Pairing methamphetamine with the Nazis is a double-the-evil masterstroke of front-page flair. It comes from a journalistic tradition that has similarly paired crack with black welfare queens in the mythic crack-baby epidemic, and cannibals and mephedrone in the nonsensical bath-salts cannibalism phenomenon. (Both the cack-baby and the bath-salts cannibalism stories have been debunked; see here<\/a> and here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The basis of the Huffington Post article is that the Nazis gave their troops the drug Pervitin (pharmaceutical methamphetamine), in World War II. This is true, but the rest of the article is a lesson in spin. <\/p>\n

1. Nothing New Here<\/strong><\/p>\n

First, the letters did not reveal anything new. Nazi use of Pervitin has been widely known for over seventy years. The letters themselves were old news<\/a> as well.\u00a0The only thing new was someone at the Huffington Post read Der Spiegel<\/a>\u00a0and realized Nazis plus meth equals web gold. <\/p>\n

2. American Kids Are Prescribed Almost the Same Thing<\/strong><\/p>\n

Methamphetamine is a type of amphetamine that has essentially the same effect on the central nervous system as dextroamphetamine. Dextroamphetamine is in Adderall. The substantial difference between street methamphetamine and Adderall is not from their pharmacology but from dosage and administration. Adderall users take small doses by the ingestion of pills. Street users inject or smoke large doses. Injecting and smoking provides a shorter, but more intense, reaction to a drug.\u00a0The Nazis distributed small doses in pill form, just as American doctors do today to our nation\u2019s youth\u2013with negligible addiction risk<\/a>.<\/p>\n

3. Allied Forces Did and Still Do Almost the Same Thing<\/strong><\/p>\n

During World War II over 72 million \u201cenergy tablets\u201d were dispersed to the British military, and an even larger amount went to US forces. Amphetamines assisted in stopping Erwin \u201cDesert Fox\u201d Rommel and the German army in Northern Africa at the Second Battle of El Alamein where the British 24th Armoured Brigade fought without sleep for four straight days while losing heavy casualties. <\/p>\n

Ironically, the American military went with amphetamines instead of methamphetamines because the former provided a better \u201csubjective lift in mood.\u201d In lay terms, the US chose amphetamine because it gave a better high, and they continued to use it. Decades later the US military\u2019s usage of amphetamines per soldier in Vietnam dwarfed the usage of both the Germans and the Allies in World War II. <\/p>\n

The amphetamine Dexedrine is still used by Air Force pilots today. In 2003, Colonel Peter Demitry, chief of the US Air Force surgeon-general\u2019s science and technology division, said<\/a> that Dexedrine, \u201chas never been associated with a proven adverse outcome in a military operation. This is a common, legal, ethical, moral and correct application.\u201d If the distribution of amphetamines caused significant troop addiction, it is doubtful the military would continue to use it. <\/p>\n

4. Everyone Already Knows That Meth Is Bad<\/strong><\/p>\n

The requisite morality message that methamphetamine is bad is delivered in the article by saying its usage leads to the symptoms exhibited by extreme cases. Most people who try methamphetamine do not continue to use it regularly, much less<\/a> become horribly addicted, and as someone who has spent time with middle-class methamphetamine users I can assure you meth mouth is as foreign to them as it is to diet-soda drinkers. (See meth\/diet-soda mouth here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo Credit: shutterstock.com June 14, 2013 \u00a0| Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. As one who writes in defense of recreational \u201chard\u201d drug users, I am frequently irked by the anti-drug sensationalism presented in supposedly objective news articles. An example is the recent front-page […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-43963","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43963\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}