Spencer Pratt sparks a “super meth” scare. It’s not even real

This is likely contributing to the rise in methamphetamine use, but it’s a “relatively minor” factor overall, with economic and housing instability driving the crisis much further, Zagorski says.

P2P meth is nothing new, Nikki Mehtani, an assistant professor in the Department of General Internal Medicine at the University of San Francisco who specializes in addiction medicine and does clinical work with the homeless, tells WIRED. “It’s been the dominant format in American presentation for the better part of a decade,” she says. “I’ve never heard the name ‘super-methamphetamine’ in any clinical or scientific context, probably because it’s just the methamphetamine we’ve all been seeing for years now. There’s nothing new or uniquely ‘super-methamphetamine’ about it at this point.”

Mahtani points out that methamphetamine use disorder is difficult to treat, in part because there aren’t any FDA-approved drug treatments, and that “recovery is really hard.” But she says Pratt’s narrative ignores the root causes of methamphetamine use among people experiencing homelessness. “The most common reason I hear is functional,” Mahtani says. “People are using stimulants to stay awake, to stay sober, and to survive on the streets at a time when poverty and homelessness are increasingly criminalized.”

“Calling it a ‘supermethamphetamine’ obscures all of that and reduces a complex public health problem to a moral panic, which tends to push us toward punitive responses and away from evidence-based interventions that actually help,” Mahtani warns. She considers the phrase “classic War on Drugs language,” calling it “vague, alarmist, and not grounded in how doctors or researchers actually talk about methamphetamine.”

The “supermethamphetamine” claims are part of a broader propaganda campaign, says Ryan Marino, an associate professor in the departments of emergency medicine and psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine who specializes in addiction and toxicology. (Pratt also referred to the homeless as “zombies.”)

“It appears that Pratt is trying to use the same right-wing lies that we’ve seen other politicians use in recent years in areas like San Francisco and Portland, which were lies at the time that actually led to worse outcomes for those places,” Marino says. In Oregon, decriminalizing possession of small amounts of drugs has not reduced inner-city homelessness in Portland, where more people are homeless than ever before, while research from multiple cities has shown a strong link between police raids for opioids and increased overdose deaths.

“Los Angeles doesn’t particularly have any worse drug problems than places that are governed by Republicans or have more stringent drug criminalization,” Marino says. He adds that Pratt’s talk of homeless people wanting drugs rather than a bed and shelter “contradicts all available evidence,” noting that drug use “is not the reason why Los Angeles has such a large homeless population.”

If Pratt is truly concerned about illicit drug use and homelessness, he should advocate for “evidence-based solutions such as public education, drug testing facilities and supervised consumption centers, and regulation of the drug supply,” Marino says, as well as “drug treatment, access to mental health care, and housing.”

But the candidate probably won’t go that route. Pratt currently sits in second place behind Bass after months of demonizing and ridiculing half-baked initiatives to help them recover from addiction.

The recurring soundbite of “super meth”, although false, makes it sound as if they are in the grip of something too powerful to be countered by civilian or medical means. And perhaps that was precisely the goal: to convince Los Angeles voters that the city’s most vulnerable residents were a hopeless cause.