Dear FRONTLINE,

when will you air the program on meth again?

houston, tx

FRONTLINE's editors respond:

Each PBS station has the option to rebroadcast the program at any time and we suggest that you contact your local PBS station about this. However, many viewers now watch FRONTLINE programs online. The full video of "The Meth Epidemic" is viewable here on this Web site.

Dear FRONTLINE,

Once again, kudos on a job very well done. Meth has touched me personally and I never believed I would have to write that sentence. I still can't believe that my beloved only child survived the addiction to meth and is alive and doing OK. And now I have a niece who has lost everything, her children, her car and job to this dread menance. And why? Because capitalism and profits for Rx companies trump people once again. It's just plain criminal. Capitalism without a conscience is worse than communism, fascism and everything in between.

Gail
lacey, wa

Dear FRONTLINE,

You are to commended for an outstanding program that was balanced and factual. Methamphetamine is a drug that impacts our society as seen in public health issues, destruction of families, impacts in the courts and corrections, social services, and the workplace. We've seen the impacts of meth first hand in both large and small communities throughout the Wyoming. No state or community is immune from this drug and it's impacts. Again, outstanding program.

Stephen Miller
Cheyenne, Wyoming

Dear FRONTLINE,

I am a recovering meth addict. I have 5 1/2 years of being clean and sober. And it has been a battle every day! I sometimes feel like people dont really understand how BAD the Meth problem is getting. I thought that your program was very truthful, and think that it should be shown on "prime-time".

You really got it right when you said that most of the property crimes are because of this drug. Identity theft is HUGE in the meth world. Why else would a person do that? We really have a huge problem on the rise... and we need to do something about it soon.

Kimberly French
Enumclaw, Washington

Dear FRONTLINE,

I found the Frontline on meth addiction very informative. I am a little dismayed, however, that the report did not indicate that Pfizer now offers a Sudafed product without pseudoephedrine. In other word, consumers do have a choice. Knowing this, the viewer is able to make a decision about the products they choose to buy. Making corporations out to be the bad guys in all of this is too often convenient.

Seattle, WA

FRONTLINE's editors respond:

The Web site for this report has information on this new product, Sudafed PE. Read the FAQs section and also the interview with Steven Robins, a pharmaceutical industry representative in which he talks about this meth proof product and other efforts they've made to help fight the epidemic.

Dear FRONTLINE,

Thank you and reporter Steve Suo of The Oregonian for your outstanding work on this story. I am so impressed with the research that was done to show the correllation between the supply and the rates of treatment for addiction and incarceration for meth-related crime. I ordered a copy immediatley to share with local schools.

Would you consider providing them to school districts free? Or maybe a conscientious pharmaceutical company will take some responsibility? If you can belive this, our local newsweekly, New Times, just published a recipe for making it. Meth is the scourge of our times and the pharmaceutical companies need to step up and stop profitting off it. Is asking Americans to register and buy cold medicine behind the counter really too much to ask? I can't believe any government would oppose this simple request. The underlying causes are important to address. But let's also do everything we can to stop ephedrine and psuedoephedrine from being used to make meth. Steve Suo is an American hero!

Alice Milham
Avila Beach, California

Dear FRONTLINE,

I just wanted to congraulate on another excellent Frontline. I was only vaguely aware of the meth epidemic. I thought this film was definitely up to your high standards. My congratulations to the producers and the Oregonian staffers who made the film possible.

Centerville, MA

Dear FRONTLINE,

Thank you for airing this program.I am speaking from personal experience. I have a twin son and daughter, both 21 that have been addicted to meth. The daughter was on meth for about 10 months, and she is now off the drug. But, my son has used for 4 years and it changed him completely.He is schizophrenic and suffers horribly. He is off the drug right now, but awaiting treatment for the second time. Treatment is extremely hard to come by in our state also ineffective. We must stop this epidemic now.Thank you so much.

Loveland, Colorado

Dear FRONTLINE,

Living in San Francisco for 10 years has allowed me to watch the effects of crystal meth on many, many people. It has been brutal indeed, but i have witnessed a very different path for 95% of users. In general, most people use it increasingly for about 2 years at which point they hit bottom. They then quit and rehab themselves. This majority of users either gets their lives together, moves back in with their parents or joins a church - really. In a weird way a silver lining of meth is that the bottom is reached so fast that people can usually turn their lives around very well, initial use at 20, bottom at 22, college at 23 graduation at 27 or a similar success. Compare this with alcohol where people can perform suboptimally for 20 years!

Speed is evil, it has really affected many people, but I think that the majority of users quit and move on with their lives with the experience of an addiction behind them making them less likely to run into addictions later in life. The 5% that cannot quit I would argue are people with poor self control mechanisms and would get hooked on something else if not meth, heroin, alcohol, food, etc.

I think the only problem with this show is the hopelessness of meth that is promulgated. If you watch this show you think that one hit and people are homeless criminals, I find that in reality, meth is a terrible drug, but most people can quit and move on with their lives very well. I like to tell users that it is much easier to quit than they think, or than the media portrays. They are NOT helpless.

Carl James
San Francisco, CA

Dear FRONTLINE,

I watched your hard-hitting documentary on Meth last night and I was shocked. My daughter suffers from allergies and when I bought a pack of Claridin- D for her, I had to ask for it from the pharmacy in the store, pay for it, then continue shopping. It was no longer on the shelves. Why not a national register to buy Sudafed or other similar over-the-counter cold medicines? I also feel the drug companies also bear some responsibility. This drug is destroying the lives of too many of our fellow citizens.

Wendy Betts
Winter Springs, Florida

Dear FRONTLINE,

I am in no way trained how to take proper statistics but this is how addiction breaks down from people I know.

Cocaine-0Heroin-0 Morphine-2Meth-10 (3 recovering)Marijuana-7Alcohol-3Tobacco-9

I am listing people who need to use each of these drugs on a regular basis to function "normally". The thing about this list is with all of these the highest number is Meth, that is because everyone I have known to use Meth has become an addict to it even more so then tobacco. I don't know how this list compares to others or how it would break down in other parts of the country but this is it is in the metro Twin Cities of Minnesota.

T. Becker
Saint Paul, Minnesota

Dear FRONTLINE,

Thank you FRONTLINE, for helping to educate and inform the general public about the meth issue. I have worked in substance abuse prevention since 2001 and our state (Washington) was in the process of an education blitz to law enforcement, treatment and prevention professionals around meth. What continues to amaze me it that if a celebrity drives with their baby on their lap it is on the front page of every publication the next day, but when it comes to meth, the east coast and much of the nation apparently is still in the dark about this drug. It is time to wake up and smell the ammonia (local meth is cooked using anhydrous ammonia for those who don't know).

It is time to address meth as the danger to society that it really is. This drug changes our brains, breaks the parent-child bond, rots our teeth, wastes our bodies and is the impetus for much of the identity theft, property crime and assault in our nation. With 1.5 million meth addicts in the US, we need effective and available/affordable treatment, more education to the general public, and we must reduce the supply right now.

The person who commented that we are being conditioned to seek drugs for our imperfections (Viagra, Prozac, etc) is right on. Why are we surprised that it includes illegal and insidious drugs like meth?

Thanks FRONTLINE for bringing us more info and I look forward to a more in-depth and intense look at what meth, and other drugs, really are doing to our society, and what we are doing about it.

Alex L.
Walla Walla, WA

Dear FRONTLINE,

I live in Louisville Kentucky and am a neighborhood leader and have watched Meth take over my neighborhood. We fight it every day - crime is up, property values are down due to Meth. We work with our police and move the meth cookers out - but they just go to the next neighbhorhood. Your show really changed how I will tackle this with my context of my life. We need more prevention and education. We will never be able to build enough prisons to hold these people.

Louisville, KY

Dear FRONTLINE,

Do your statistics also include the Navajo and Hopi lands?A generation of children are being lost this poison.Gangs now terrorize their elders and villages.The beautiful high country of Flagstaff is now also infected with this poison.With it comes gangs and violence.

No community is off limits.Labs are busted rolling down our hwys.in rental trucks.1.5 million people short circuiting and in meltdown mode should concern all of us.

flagstaff,, Arizona

Dear FRONTLINE,

I have heard a lot about the meth epidemic since moving to Oregon and with a depressed economy and many rural poor I certainly see the underpinnings for such suffering. I grew up in Washington state just north of here, but I grew up in a highly educated community that has the second highest concentration of PhD's in the country located near a national laboratory. Still, I saw a great deal of the working, white poor that make up a large chunk of the population in the Western states.

Certainly, boredom, lack of opportunity, greater economic demands on families all play a part. Does are society fund the future? I'd have to say not for most youth. I believe Martin Luther King was on the right track with his focus on poverty across the races. Childcare needs to be a priority for working mothers and guaranteed medical care and investment in education and training a priority.

I know these are boring subjects and not the magic bullet of shutting down pseudoephedrine factories in India, but it is the real work ahead of us. I support these short term efforts that lead to a reduction the death and injury line, mostly because I want to reduce the suffering of future generations. I have seen it in my own family. My dad's family has two branches, the successful American Indian branch and the quickly sinking, poor, white branch. I see my second cousins, mostly German American in South Dakota destroying their lives and having numerous children and destroying their young lives too. It is the multiplication factor that is scary. And it can all be traced back to the abusive, drinking grandfather. It is scary what effect one person can have on the many that follow.

So, it is by providing social services for these mothers and families all the time, not just when they are facing prison time, that we can really change this country and reduce suffering in the future. Our government is constantly fiddling with the budget and skimming money off of social services indicating that those people are a drag on the rest of us. But "those people" are mostly children and need us.

I hope this leads to a real war on poverty, not just drugs. Excellent show.

Jacqueline
Hillsboro, OR