Methamphetamine's roots go back thousands of years

By Ken Miller

The origin of methamphetamine may go back thousands of years, but a recent evolution of the drug has contributed to its spread in Oklahoma.

The development of amphetamine, followed by the manmade version known as methamphetamine, may have begun in China with the ephedra plant, said Dr. John Duncan, a chemist with the Oklahoma State Bureau of Narcotics.

The plant the Chinese know as Ma Huang was used to treat asthma and for increased energy, Duncan said. From the plant ultimately came ephedrine, then pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient in meth.

"Chinese medicine has been using ephedra in the form of Ma Huang for at least 5,000 years," he said.

The use of ephedra may even date to the time of the Greek philosopher Socrates and his visit to the Oracle of Delphi, who pronounced one's fate after inhaling vapors from a pot.

Ephedra plants grow all around the oracle, Duncan said.

"It very well might be that the Oracle at Delphi was using ephedra to induce the psychotic states from which she eventually reads your fate," he said.

In 1885, a German scientist isolated amphetamine, Duncan said, and methamphetamine may have soon followed.

Methamphetamine was also developed by scientists during the early 1900s for use in asthma medication and nasal decongestants, he said.

It also was given to some combatants during World War II, and Duncan says Japanese kamikaze pilots reportedly took almost lethal doses before their fatal mission.

"They were extraordinarily high on meth at that time," Duncan said. "Of course that probably interfered with their hitting a lot of ships so it probably worked to our advantage."

Meth use took off in the United States in the 1960s, fueled by motorcycle gangs. The bikers hired college chemistry students to make the drug, paying them by providing strippers from clubs the gangs controlled.

And the biker gang Hell's Angels apparently gave the drug one of its best-known slang terms _ crank _ by hiding the drug in the crankcases of their motorcycles and carrying it to a large rock concert.

Asked what they had, members reportedly replied, "Crank, and it'll crank you up," Duncan said.

By the early 1990s, the sale and possession of chemicals used to make meth were outlawed in Oklahoma.

But other recipes for making meth, using pseudoephedrine, were already in use in California. With those recipes, meth could be made on a kitchen countertop or in the back of a pickup truck.

A purer form of the drug, called dextro-, or d-meth, emerged.

"Almost 100 percent of what we find on the street now is pure dextro-methamphetamine," Duncan said.

The sanitary areas where the drug was once made have been replaced with what Duncan compares to a cartoon known for its often vulgar humor.

"We started seeing people go from more pristine laboratory conditions," he said, "to Beavis and Butthead conditions."