Prev Next
Featured Quizzes
Politix Daily Headlines
Featured Debates
Issues

See all 19 issues

DRUG SCARE

Are 'Faces of Meth' an Effective Deterrent?

Graphic images used by police in schools

Next>

by Mary Noble

Senior Editor t +

Image: Politix / rehabs.com

Since Oregon's Multnomah County Sheriff's Office started posting mug shots of meth addicts online, "faces of meth" have been a regular feature of the viral internet.

Common sense suggests ads like this would put anyone off meth for life, and some studies suggest they work well. But others claim the images are ineffective, or even counterproductive, because they desensitize kids to the bad effects of meth.

Scare tactics can fail because teenagers believe that they personally are invincible, whatever calamities might befall others. With that in mind, the Mendocino County Sheriff's office has built a computer program that simulates the effects of meth on photos of teens themselves - and the Sheriff's office is convinced that the program works.

Via Buzzfeed, NPR, and FacesOfMeth.
Like this article? B Vote Up
?

Do you think these images will deter kids from using meth?

View results

144 Comments (view in Forum)

  • jamie91
    !
    I actually agree with you. Parenting is the key to most things kids face in life. I wish the economy allowed more parents the time to spend raising their kids rather than working 3 part time jobs to just feed them.
  • Blessed
    !
    I agree, however, good parenting doesn't always work. I have seen good christian families with two or three drug-free kids and one that has tried it all. The pictures would certainly keep me from ever trying the poison-not that I would anyway.
    I'm sure most of you have seen the email that went around a few years ago called Meet Mr. And Mrs. Crystal Meth. It was supposed to be true poem written by an addict before her death. It will run cold chills down your spine...true or not.
  • PayThatCEO
    !
    Not everyone who uses or tries drugs are children. People grow up and sometimes make choices they wish they hadn't. There are plenty of grownups in jail now for vehicular manslaughter/DUI who had great parents. If a television commercial can provide ANYONE, regardless of age, with the knowledge to think twice about doing something they might regret, what could possibly be wrong with that?

  • Load more replies >

  • jessejaymes
    !
    An addict doesn't see themselves the same way everyone else sees them. And kids? When have they ever cared what authority thinks? The more you try to tell kids that something is bad for them the more they want it.
  • martydotcom
    !
    this issue is not how the addict perceives themselves. Everyone who takes that first is says to themselves, I'll never get hooked. Neo is right, it's all about parenting skills. Kids have no respect for authority? Again parenting skills are key rebellion is necessarily impossible to deal with
  • jessejaymes
    !
    @martydotcom Well I personally have never heard a parent admit they are a bad parent. But some out there are doing one sorry job. I have yet to see a decent parent in the past 10 years outside of maybe a dozen.
  • Zazziness
    !
    @jessejaymes Unless you had your children extraordinarily late in life, you had children during the psychedelic 60s. Or "The Me Generation" 70s. Or the "Greed is Good" 80s. Nostaligia always says the past was better but it lies.

  • Load more replies >

  • Comment removed for Engagement Etiquette violation. Replies may also be deleted.
  • mimi57
    !
    Works for me and I'm no kid...I've never done drugs and don't smoke anything. Exercise, eat well, and do Yoga.
    Life goes fast, I want to stay as healthy as I can for as long as possible.There is no such thing as an old drug addict...
  • mimi57
    !
    @Chromalord Oh, I have and there are exceptions, but why put yourself through that?...It's no way to live and I'm thankful my kids do not do drugs...
  • jessejaymes
    !
    @mimi57 mimi let's get on board the reality train for a second. You can be just as conservative as you like and know the reality about illegal drugs. The Libertarians want to legalize all illegal drugs. I agree for several reasons. 1.) We have 300,000 in America in prison for pot for God's sake. At a cost of an average of 38,000.00 a year for each person. That's just absurd. 2.) if you make all drugs legal the idiots (can we still say idiots?) will kill themselves eventually and crime will drop, our prison costs will drop, policing can get back to actually seeing gangstas robbing a convenience store, court costs will drop. 3.) In actuality more people die from legal pharmaceuticals every year than die from illegal drugs in any 10 year period. Not to mention the illegal abuse of pharmas. 4.) Cartels would suffer. 5.) Less of us would have a heart attack when the Congress does their daily unbelievable BS.

  • Load more replies >

  • PNWest
    !
    I don't know if they will deter anyone but it's worth a try. I hope it works. Too many lives are screwed up by drugs and alcohol. Meth seems to speed up the process, pardon the pun.
  • Libertyiskey
    !
    It could help maybe. I don't see how it could hurt or make kids want to do meth, but hey maybe kids want to look like that. If that's the case then I think all hope is lost anyway.
  • classychazy
    !
    After working with these people for the last 7 years I would say no its not going to work. Most adolescents as well as adults know the effects drugs have and they just don't care! There is nothing that pisses me off more to hear drug and alcohol addiction a being called a "disease" it is not a "disease". It was classified as a disease in the late 1980's to force insurance Providers to pay for bad and stupid choices people make in their lives. You make choices in your life whether good or bad you should pay for them yourself!
  • kathyparsell
    !
    Teenagers think people are hideously ugly if they are over age 30, so I can only hope this will work to keep them from trying for the first time. They already feel super-human, they certainly need a deadly drug to reinforcemthat feeling!
  • Bellweather
    !
    I don't believe that young people think that anyone over 30 is "ugly." I work wiith young people all the time on campaigns. All they care about is: "can you use a phone.? They are polite, responsible, and not rude.
    Do you believe that young people think their over 30 parents are "ugly"?
  • kathyparsell
    !
    @Bellweather
    Yes, I have four of my own so needless so say lots of my friends have children also. While they might not find all people over thirty ugly, they find them embarassing, irrevelant, uninformed and often either asexual or sexually deviant. They often refuse to consider that maybe their parents know anything about anything. Fortunantly I was open with my children about my drug abuse abuse as a teenager and of the horrible consequences and bad decisions I made because of them. Now these drugs are even worse that they were when I was using them. Maybe seeing people age dramatically over a short period of time will be the one thing that will get their attention. Surely you can disagree with the idea that young people are obsessed with looks.
  • Bellweather
    !
    @kathyparsell Everybody is over-concerned with "looks."
    But, in my experiences with young people right now is one of teamwork on political campaigns. All people are "relevant" in those circumstances.
  • mimi57
    !
    My best friends daughter has been a heroine addict for about four years...she's a really cute girl, but no one can
    stand her for long. She's had the nicest, most successful guys who were interested in her, and yet none of them could deal with the heroine addiction. She has flat-lined twice and she has been in four rehabs, only to leave
    early and never completed one. Now she is living with a 70 yr. old man, he lets her stay there for now, I'm sure
    he gets 'benefits'. However, he has kicked her out, due to her needing more money and coming in all hours...
    Sad life and she will probably never see middle age... Show the pics., it can never hurt.
  • PoliticalSpice
    !
    @mimi57
    I was joking. Knew a girl as a teen, my best friends girlfriend. We spent years together hanging out. Loved her (not romantically, but you know really close friends). She got into h a few years later. Very sad. Helped her husband (another child hood friend) get into treatment and divorce her so he could clean up (he is doing fine over a decade now), but she bever got clean. Been to prison a couple times. Good news is hearing she is still alive. Years go by when no one knows where she is. Very sad. Still have love beads she gave me in the 70's.
  • mudzangandoro
    !
    It might help as a contributing factor. But ultimately, "charity begins at home". Kids learn from their surroundings. If parents lead by example at home, they will undoubtedly brush off the same characteristics to their kids.
  • tomincali
    !
    nothing will replace parents stepping up and having the dope talk with their kids.

    then again so many kids now days are growing up with parents on that crap. maybe the kids should come up with some adds . gov trying to reach kids doesn't seem to get their attention maybe other kids could help reach them.
  • Bellweather
    !
    My ex-husband is a meth addict. When I met him, he looked like Harrison Ford. 10 years later, Freddy Kruger looks better. It didn't happen overnight. He knew it was happening. He had seen "faces of meth." He wouldn't stop. Go figure...
  • jessejaymes
    !
    It's a sad situation. But sadder is these faces you see are from the "modern meth" that they make with battery acid, rat poison and so on. It came to this level because the govt is "protecting us" from the old "speed" which, bad as it was, was nowhere near as destructive as the stuff they make today.
  • Bellweather
    !
    @jessejaymes I didn't even know there was "modern meth." Haven't seen that ex in over two years,...don't want to see him. Scary stuff.

  • Load more replies >

  • seedtick
    !
    It helps...but nothing takes the place of parents giving kids good direction in life. Then, we also need District Attorneys who are not afraid to prosecute those who furnish the poison and courts that punish them.
  • Concerned_Cit
    !
    Interesting side note - Methamphetamine was first created by chemist Nagayoshi Nagai in the late 1800s, and became popular during WWII with the Germans and the Allies.

    It became a popular prescription drug by doctors for weight loss, alcoholism treatment, depression, etc. and still is prescribed.

    The US government gave it to soldiers as late as the 1970s, and many returning veterans during the 1950s and 1960s help to popularize the drug in the US, starting mostly with bikers who would hide it in their crankcases of their motorcycles ("crank" became a nickname) and then spreading to musicians, college students, etc, until it permeated all of the US.

    Cheap and easy to manufacture it became the drug of choice among the working class, enabling them to work double shifts or longer with no need for sleep, while increasing their mental alertness. The cumulative effects of long term use result from lack of proper nutrition, lack of sleep, overproduction of neurotransmitters, and a general acceleration of wear on the body.

    Kind of ironic that it was the GOVERNMENTS who got the meth addiction craze started, and now takes TAX DOLLARS to "fight" what they created. or is it ironic? Perhaps intentional? Drug addicts are easy to control afterall.
  • Concerned_Cit
    !
    @PNWest Thank you, it is a very brief and simpified history of course, but I think it's interesting how most of the "illegal" or "controlled" drugs were once endorsed and pushed by the medical community and governments. Doctors once (and sometimes still do) prescribed tobacco, cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamines, radium water, alcohol, opium, heroin, etc etc, along with really idiotic treatments not drug related. Makes one wonder what is being prescribed by pharmaceutical companies these days that future generations will look back on and shake their heads at in bewilderment. Don't forget the US governement still officially endorses a "high carbohydrate/low fat-low protein diet", despite the protests from knowledgeable people back in the 1970s over that stance, and despite the growing obesity epidemic that has resulted from it.(Of course continued support for that is in part because of U,N, Agenda 21, since large populations cannot be sustained on a healthy high protein diet because of dwindling resources.)
  • PNWest
    !
    @Concerned_Cit One thing that is very disturbing to me is the way pharmaceutical companies test new drugs. They run lots of studies, many with serious flaws, and use only the ones that show their drug in a good light. They bury the studies they don't like. Also since research is expensive, grants tend to go to researchers who know which side of the bread the butter is on. None of this is in the public's interest.
  • classychazy
    !
    @PNWest. Yes its extremely disturbing! I have seen the effects of these "new miracle drugs"! I'll be the first one to tell you if it hasn't been on the market for atleast 7 years steer clear of it, because chances are there are a ton of negative effects that were never released to the public. Its only when they get sued you truly find the real story.
  • Concerned_Cit
    !
    @PNWest - Yep, "follow the money" is a good slogan to use when questioning anything. That is usually the motivation behind most everything, money and power/influence over others. Is the basic reason politicians want to be in office, and makes me laugh at all the people who fawn over them thinking they're "looking out for the little man". I guess sheep will always need shepherds.

  • Load more replies >

  • R Load more comments...