Contributor: 'Super meth' isn't exactly real, but the drug is a real factor in L.A. homelessness

"Meth is meth. Like aspirin is aspirin. What matters is how much is in each dose. Today, Los Angeles does have a hyper-pure methamphetamine problem. It is a major driver of homelessness and mental illness here and in many other parts of the country. But it's not new."

"Twenty years ago, what was sold on the street as meth was 40% to 50% meth, the rest being cheap filler that dealers used to expand their supply. Today, meth made in Mexico and sold on U.S. streets routinely measures more than 90% pure - and has for more than a decade. The catastrophic results have been visible on L.A. streets for some time now."

"For many years, the Mexican trafficking world used a decongestant called ephedrine as the principal ingredient in its methamphetamine. Ephedrine is difficult to make. Traffickers never could get enough ephedrine to make meth in quantities sufficient to cover more than parts of the western United States. In other parts of the country, local meth cooks used Sudafed pills to extract ephedrine to make small quantities of low-quality, high-priced meth."

"In 2008, the Mexican government reduced the allowed amounts of imported ephedrine, which traffickers had always siphoned for their illicit uses. They switched to another method - old but new to them, with a central ingredient called phenyl 2 propanone, an industrial chemical called P2P for short. The P2P method has one huge advantage over the ephedrine method: ease of access to the key ingredient."

Methamphetamine purity levels determine harm more than labels. Los Angeles and the United States do not necessarily have a distinct “super meth” problem, but they do have a hyper-pure methamphetamine problem that contributes to homelessness and mental illness. Earlier street meth was often 40% to 50% meth, with the remainder being filler used to stretch supply. Over time, meth produced in Mexico and sold in the U.S. has routinely measured above 90% purity for more than a decade. The shift followed changes in trafficking methods: reduced ephedrine imports in 2008 led traffickers to adopt a P2P-based process using widely available industrial chemicals, enabling larger-scale production.

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