Montana has won a battle against drugs, partly by changing some of its underlying logic. But they - and we - are still losing the war.
Since 2005, Montana has experienced what the Christian Science Monitor calls "a dramatic example of success in America's war on drugs."

Instead of struggling with America's fifth-worst meth problem, the state now ranks 39th. Teen use has declined 45 percent; adult use is down 70 percent.

A large part of the success, we hear, owes to the Montana Meth Project and its campaign of "reverse marketing," designed to highlight the repellent features of meth as a product. But the ads they've released aren't your daddy's "this is your brain on drugs" commercials (WARNING: some may find these ads disturbing):

I don't necessarily have a problem with the Montana Meth Project's approach. It's more the enforcement strategies surrounding it that give me pause.

Another reason for Montana's success in fighting meth, apparently, is that law enforcement has embraced what I would call a slightly more progressive strategy: targeting supply chains instead of individuals. This has its disadvantages, though. According to CSM, prices have doubled almost overnight, which could provoke violence and greater desperation among addicts.
That may be only one example of the way in which Montana is winning the battle but losing the war. Even enthusiasts seem pessimistic:

"The bottom line is that the war on drugs continues," says David Crane, a professor at Syracuse University College of Law in New York. But "it's like grabbing onto water. Every time we grab onto it, it goes right through our fingers or diverts and goes somewhere else."
For example, the same Quest report that showed a nationwide decline in meth and cocaine use also found a 5 percent rise in amphetamine use, which could indicate that some users are switching to milder drugs.

I think these quotes are worth thinking about. The article goes on to warn that budget cuts coming from the Bush administration may undercut enforcement efforts, but it's more than that: it's that we have to approach America's drug problems with imagination and compassion. No matter how disturbing the ads get, and no matter how tight the supply line gets, the war on drugs is doomed to fail because the whole mindset is still wrong. We have to admit that there is a strong demand for drugs in America, and not just some "bad people" corrupting our youth. Unless we're addressing root causes of drug use (and that will involve some pretty honest national conversations about why we as a nation use so many drugs, including prescription medicines), and providing real help to users, I believe we're stuck. Sure, a strong social stigma against meth use can prevent people from trying it for the first time - but it can also make addicts less likely to seek help. We have to bolster enforcement efforts with more effective treatment programs, or we'll be leaving a lot of people out in the cold.
The war on drugs won't be won until it stops being a "war" and starts being a conversation. "War" implies that we're fighting our own people; conversation implies that we're solving a problem together, using critical thinking instead of tough-guy posturing.
And don't get me wrong - it seems like the Montana Meth Project has done some really good work. And it seems that their founder is on the same page as I am about treatment and prevention. I just worry that without fixing the other pieces of the puzzle, their success will soon evaporate.
With a new politics on the horizon in America, we should have this conversation on a national scale. It's been a long time coming.
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When we read about "studies" and "surveys," we often immediately assume that if someone studied it, or someone conducted a survey about it, their findings must be right. And the fact is, the vast majority of these studies and surveys are flawed to begin with for a number of reasons.

Measuring the amount of people who are using a paranoia-producing drug like methamphetamine is comparable to asking for a show of hands at the tax office of all those people people who have cheated on their taxes. Many meth users are not typically in the habit of answring their telephone or responding to a knock at the door, much less participate in a survey.

The fact is, 90% of people that watch a public service announcement about the dangers of drugs do not have the genetic and/or environmental "ingredients" to put them at risk for addiction to anything. And of the 10% that do, I can asssure you as a recovering addict myself, that no amount of scary advertising is going to stop someone from escaping a reality that they detest. Until drug abuse is viewd as the symptom of the problem and not the problem, and until addiction is seen as one star in a person's entire constellation of need, nothing will change.

Quest Diagnostics comes up with precisely the findings they perceive they are supposed to in order to maintain their government contract. Drug testing is a multi-billion dollar a year business, that the Reagan administration snuck in under the noses of the American people. It began with mandatory testing within the Federal government, which was then extended to every business entity who planned on doing business with the Federal government.

The only people who do research on illicit drugs are those people who are funded by the government, because private enterprise has no interest in researching something they can't sell. Years ago, government funded rserach told us that even a small amount of Ecstasy could result in permanent impairment. And the government and law enforcement had a filed day with those findings. And when the authors of that study retracted those findings a year later, hardly any mention of it was made by anyone.

What people must realize is that there is no political neutrality when it comes to illicit drugs.

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Why Drug Addicts Are Getting Sterilized for Cash
Saturday, Apr. 17, 2010 - When Joanne Chavarria's grandmother died last summer, she coped by turning to the bottle. "I started to drink. And then I started to smoke some weed. And then I started doing meth," says the 32-year old from Merced, California. Chavarria, who began abusing drugs at the age of 12, was eight months pregnant at the time. Last August, she gave birth to drug-addicted twins, and California's Child Protective Services took the infants, and Chavarria's three other children, into custody.

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