VUMC, state join forces to fight meth
Gov. Phil Bredesen at the “Meth Destroys” campaign launch.
photo by Dana Johnson
Associated Press reporter Lucas Johnson, left, and Nashville City Paper reporter Judith Tackett, center, interview Vanderbilt’s Jeffrey Guy, M.D., about burn victims from meth lab explosions across the Southeast.
photo by Dana Johnson
Gov. Phil Bredesen is enlisting a group of local and state partners, including Vanderbilt University Medical Center and all 31 Tennessee District Attorneys, to fight the use and manufacturing of methamphetamine in Tennessee.
He launched a $1.5 million statewide methamphetamine education campaign, Meth Destroys, on Monday at Merrol Hyde Magnet School in Hendersonville.
The issue is an important one to Vanderbilt, according to Jeffrey Guy, M.D., director of the Vanderbilt Regional Burn Center.
Last year, as many as a third of the patients in the Burn Center had been involved in meth explosions, Guy said, and are responsible for an estimated $5 million – $10 million a year in uncompensated care.
He said the number of meth patients has since reduced to about 10 percent, but a lot of those numbers rely on self-reporting.
“It's not like a gunshot wound. If somebody comes in with a gunshot wound there is no denying how that happened. But on a lot of this stuff we rely on self reporting, and even when the patients come here, you don't know who has the meth burns,” Guy said.
“We have seen a reduction in the number of really big explosions … the big labs blowing up, we have seen a reduction in those. But even if you have four or five of those a year, economically, you are still taking it in the teeth.”
State authorities seized 1,574 meth labs last year, which was 75 percent of the total in the Southeast and second only to Missouri across the United States.
“This program doesn't teach, it just shows people,” Bredesen said of Meth Destroys. “Meth is really gross. There is no need to exaggerate the results.”
Meth is typically consumed in a white powder form that can be snorted, smoked or dissolved in water to be injected. Effects of chronic meth abuse include psychotic behavior and brain damage.
Health risks include depression, psychosis, skin infections, high blood pressure, hepatitis C, kidney damage and severe tooth decay.
Meth is manufactured using common household products such as drain cleaner, lithium batteries and cold medicines containing ephedrine and pseudoephedrines.
Recent laws enacted by the General Assembly now require drug stores to ask for identification before selling products such as cold medicines containing ephedrine and pseudoephedrines.
Meth labs seizures in Tennessee are on the decline this year, with 897 through August.
Meth labs have been found in homes, apartments, motel rooms, cars, trailers, abandoned buildings and various other locations in virtually every county in the state, according to the Governor's Task Force on Methamphetamine Abuse.