Off the Editor’s Desk – 9-6-2023

Still drugs on our streets!

We are still facing drugs on our streets and deaths from those illegal drugs that have caused the deaths of some 9,512 Wisconsin citizens to overdoses in a seven-year period from2014-2021.

It seems like every week that I look at a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Wisconsin reports someone has been indicted or convicted for attempting to sell drugs in our communities.

The release of August 31st noted that a man and women from Coon Valley, Wisconsin where indicted on conspiring to distribute more than 500 grams of methamphetamine and fentanyl.

Now the penalties are very great for this crime. They both face a mandatory sentence of at lease ten years in prison with a maximum of life in federal prison and the government seeks a forfeiture of $58,104 alleged to be proceeds of the drug conspiracy.

With the thought of being sent to jail for the rest of your life should be a deterrent so one would not do the crime. But apparently there are many people that take the chance in an attempt to make an illegal buck and end up in trouble. 

But if you use drugs, you could end up on the death chart along with almost ten thousand other Wisconsin citizens that overdosed in the seven-year period. Spending on cannabis, cocaine, heroin and Methamphetamine is about $150 billion annually for Americans.

Cannabis is becoming legal in many states including Minnesota and that will see the cost of drug problems only to go up.

Methamphetamine also known as “speed,” “ice,” “Meth,” is a powerful, illegally produced stimulant that attacks the central nervous system. Use of Methamphetamine can quickly lead to nervousness, compulsive behavior, irritability, anger, aggressiveness, hallucinations, paranoia, depression with suicidal tendencies, heart attacks and strokes and a overdoes death.

Although most of the methamphetamine in Wisconsin is manufactured outside of the state now, it was not always that way. Twenty years ago Methamphetamine production was at clandestine laboratories in northwestern part of this state and peeked some years ago. With much work by law enforcement people, they dismantled many of the Meth labs in the state.

Much of the methamphetamine available in Wisconsin now comes from Mexico, according to the Wisconsin Department of Justice. It is transported to this state from California and other southwest border states, as homemade Meth labs have decreased in rural areas.

Here are some numbers that you should know about. Drug users generate Ninety percent of identity theft cases.

For each pound of methamphetamine produced, five to six pounds of hazardous waste are generated.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy reports that 1,660 children were found in the homes where 5,846 Meth labs were seized nationwide in 2005.

And, over six million children lived with at least one parent who abused or was dependent on alcohol or illegal drugs.

Over 106,000 Americans died of overdoes of illicit drugs and prescription opioids in 2021. So keep our children informed about evils of illegal drugs, and keep drug dealers away from our community.

Thanks for reading!   ~Carlton