Meth isn’t going to help South Dakota’s branding.
According to information provided by the Department of Social Services to the Legislative interim subgroup studying methamphetamine addiction, 7,600 South Dakotans age 12 and up used meth in the past year. That’s 0.88% of our population.If that factor applies consistently around our various towns, there’d be 1,600 meth-heads in Sioux Falls, 250 in Aberdeen, 65 in Madison, and four in Montrose.
The national rate of meth use is 0.56%. In other words, you’ll find 57% more meth users among a crowd of South Dakotans than you will among a crowd of Americans in general.
According to the Department of Corrections, the percentage of inmates in the can for drug crimes has risen from 18% in December 2010 to 32% in December 2018.
Meth study group member Representative Doug Post (R-7/Volga) said Tuesday that the Legislature needs data on current spending on addiction treatment so it can decide how much more (if anything) needs to be spent to deal with the problem. Perhaps some number-crunchers can supplement that budget data with an economic analysis of how much GDP we lose to drug addiction as workers underperform or don’t show up.
Or maybe we could go really deep and look at the economic factors—i.e., low wages—that may drive people to take stimulants like meth to keep them awake through the second-shift jobs they need to keep a roof over their heads.
Keep looking for data, Representative Post. 215 meth users in Brookings are counting on you to help them kick the habit.
This doesn’t pass the smell test. Why would SD have a rate higher than it’s neighbors and higher than the rest of America? Does this report come from the South Dakota Dept. of Social Services? Was there a detailed report on the methodology used for this assertion by DSS? There’s a lot of federal money on the table here and this group has been shown to be untrustworthy, over reactive, and corrupt on many other issues involving federal money.
Chair: Heinert, Troy
Vice-Chair:Jensen, Kevin
Representatives:
Greenfield, Lana(R); Howard, Taffy(R); Jensen, Kevin(R); Post, Doug(R); St. John, Tamara(R)
Senators:
Heinert, Troy(D); Maher, Ryan(R)
More information is needed before such an anomaly is believed.
“percentage of inmates in the can for drug crimes has risen from 18% in December 2010 to 32% in December 2018.”
Wow. That’s huge and heartbreaking. I thought Iowa was an unfortunate leader in meth use.
Porter, the “report” was one page of bullet points. But DSS cites the SAMHSA National Survey on Drug Use and Health from 2016 and 2017. That federal survey provides methodology… though I’m having trouble finding a link to SD-specific data.
I look at that list of legislators and, perhaps surprisingly, I’m less worried about corruption and more concerned about simple competence. The Republicans are all hard-right extremists who usually don’t focus on practical problem-solving. I wonder how on earth we can expect them to come up with any investment in treatment services.
Interesting: WalletHub crunched a bunch of numbers and calculated that South Dakota ranks really low for drug problems, 44th in the nation.. But even if that ranking is right, drug offenders are still crowding the Brown County Jail and leading jailers to force inmates to sleep on the floor.
SO we have problems on two ends: we don’t know how to create a community in which people have real options and don’t feel the need to do drugs, and we don’t know how to deal with drug addiction.