Flyer's Chocolate

If you are a meth addict living in the Los Angeles area, you can make $900 by participating in a study of the drug's effects on the human brain.

Who would be crazy enough to participate in this study?

A meth head, that's who.

It would take a lot of powder-courage to waltz into a hospital--now more than ever a territory ruled by 'the man'--and admit to serial illegal drug abuse. It would not be hard for an enterprising police officer to simply follow all these subjects out of the hospital and bust them five minutes later, after they smoke rock in their car, the bathroom at Burger King, on their back porch, etc.

Risky. But $900 buys a hell of a lot of meth...

What is more interesting about this offer, as usual, is the moral question.

Meth is legendarily-addictive--shouldn't we be protecting these hopeless addicts from themselves, helping them to kick the habit, however difficult that may be? Instead, they are oddly rewarded for their gross misstep with a $900 payment.

Where do you think that $900 is going to be spent, in most cases?

I'll give you a hint--it won't be used to purchase baby formula or make the car payment. The baby lies motionless and stiff in its crib, forgotten, and the car was repossessed months ago.

Not only that, but I wager somebody out there in radioland heard the same commercial I did and had one of those once-in-a-lifetime, lightning-bolt ideas-- to start smoking/injecting meth, in order to participate in the study, thereby paying the rent. You know somebody did. Lord knows there are more than enough half-wits out there...

And so the study is now doubly questionable--rewarding and creating meth addicts, supplying them all with a cash infusion to purchase more meth.

I bet if I asked one of the doctors running the study, he/she would argue that if there were no lucrative payment, there would be no subjects. And without meth-brains to study, he/she would not be able to help...cure meth brain.

I bet if I asked the smartest doctor working on the study, he/she would turn from the cat scan machine, shrug his or her shoulders, and coolly say to me:

"Hey, it's better than having them running around stealing."

And he/she would be right. Nothing like a dose of realism.


Meth fact of the day, courtesy wikipedia.org:

"One of the earliest uses of methamphetamine was during World War II when the German military dispensed it under the trade name Pervitin. It was widely distributed across rank and division, from elite forces to tank crews and aircraft personnel. Chocolates dosed with methamphetamine were known as Fliegerschokolade ("flyer's chocolate") when given to pilots, or Panzerschokolade ("tanker's chocolate") when given to tank crews. From 1942 until his death in 1945, Adolf Hitler was given frequent intravenous injections of methamphetamine by his personal physician, Theodor Morell as a treatment for depression and fatigue. It is possible that it was used to treat Hitler's speculated Parkinson's disease, or that his Parkinson-like symptoms which developed from 1940 onwards were related to use of methamphetamine."