When I first encountered my college classmates doing “Crystal” to keep partying in the 1980s, I had no fundamental understanding of what it was apart from being a cheaper stand-in for cocaine. Crystal methamphetamine was all over Southern California during that time, and you could be pretty sure that if you were in a setting where you were staying up late for almost any reason, it was behind the nearest closed door. It was only a few years later that America was given a more formal introduction to meth as a cheap, ubiquitous, highly addictive destroyer of human beings.
Meth is the most widely used synthetic stimulant drug in the world, used to stay awake and work longer hours or simply to cope with economic stress in places as disparate as Africa and Southeast Asia. It’s also become a touchstone of popular media in the Americas through its depiction in television shows like Breaking Bad. Before and after mug shots of meth users documenting the ravenous effects of the drug on the human body have become meme fodder on social media.
However, the vast network of illicit commerce and violence surrounding meth remains monolithic and opaque to the outside world. Dr. Teun Voeten, a cultural anthropologist and award-winning veteran war photographer, has delved into this world, presenting us with a comprehensive and compelling look in his monograph The Devil’s Drug: The Global Emergence of Crystal Meth.
The Devil’s Drug begins with an overview of the drug’s complex history, including instances where its use was tolerated or even encouraged by governments, such as in wartime, and its subsequent use as a form of mass self-medication by traumatized post-World War II populations, such as in Japan. That nation would later respond with what Voeten describes as “an intensive campaign focused on prevention of consumption, treatment of addicts, and disruption of the trade.”
The Devil’s Drug is made all the more compelling by the author’s dual contributions as an ethnographer and photographer, where he can convey the effects of methamphetamine use and trafficking on both individuals and institutions in human terms.
Advertising for this campaign would become the prototype for similar campaigns, including the “Faces of Meth” campaign, which featured user mug shots and was widely copied throughout America in the 2000s. Combined with improved living conditions brought about by what would become the Japanese economic miracle, Japan was able to quell widespread use of meth by the end of the 1950s, only to have it seep back into the culture in more recent times.
Voeten’s introduction then moves on to the current consolidation of the illegal meth trade from hubs in Mexico, Southeast Asia, and Europe, and to document the human and societal cost of meth use and trafficking through interviews and photographs. Subsequent chapters alternatively outline the development of meth trafficking globally, such as how America’s highway system made Michigan into a hub for the distribution of the drug, and profile people affected by meth addiction, ranging from addicts in Tijuana and on Los Angeles’ Skid Row to the “chemsex” subculture in Amsterdam.
The Devil’s Drug is made all the more compelling by the author’s dual contributions as an ethnographer and photographer, where he can convey the effects of methamphetamine use and trafficking on both individuals and institutions in human terms. Of particular interest is the chapter on Fentanyl and how it may well succeed meth as a global addiction crisis. Voeten outlines the impact of the drug on Kensington Avenue in Philadelphia:
Eric is a short man with a hunchback. He resembles the young Bob Dylan. Leaning forward, supported by a cane, he begs under the subway overpass. He used to be a painter, easily earning $ 1,000 a week. Then he got on Coke and later fentanyl and lost his job. He earns $20 on an average day by begging .… Sheila is a white woman with dreadlocks. She’s from Ohio. “It’s a candy store here for all kinds of drugs,” she says. “Most people came here to score some heroin. They tried it and they never got away .… Clay is a black man with a toothless grin, but with a business model. He has a grabber with a long stick. With it, he picks up used needles from the street and puts them in a plastic jar. When he has 100 dirty syringes, he exchanges them with the Needle exchange and receives 100 clean syringes in return. Then he sells them to these two users for $.5 each. This way he can buy all the fentanyl he needs .… free dope and free food, what else do you need? … Most people steal to support their drug habit. Under a new law, shoplifting goods with a retail price of up to $950 is no longer a felony but a misdemeanor. Addicts eagerly exploit this new opportunity. But as a result, many shops have to close as their shelves are emptied with impunity. Women usually engage in prostitution.
Notably, Voeten observes these issues from a perspective informed by political leftism, but rather than praising the performative approach from street outreach workers, Voeten urges that “it is time to deromanticize drug use and see it as a sad activity .… It is imperative to formulate a progressive anti-capitalist narco-critical discourse.”
Voeten’s next book, due out soon, expands further on the fentanyl crisis and will include research he’s done in San Francisco. The Voice spoke to Voeten when he was here in mid-May, and you can listen to our Sunday Brunch Space with him here.
The Devil’s Drug: The Global Emergence of Crystal Meth | by Teun Voeten | Rowman & Littlefield |296 pages
