Is Syracuse A Drug Capital?
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Apr 20, 2015
Enticing title isn’t it? I’m not sure whether I believe it or not, although I’m inclined not to believe it. Yet, there have been some interesting things that seemed to happen around here before it spread to other areas… unless I’ve just been clueless.
The first time I heard of hookahs (which I had always thought was just a fancy bong) was when a couple of Syracuse University football players opened a lounge in the Marshall Street area. They ran it for a few weeks until university officials asked them to sell it for whatever reason. They did, although I’m not sure the university had the right to ask them to sell.
I’ll admit that I don’t know a lot about this type of thing, but from what I hear more than just regular tobacco is sometimes consumed in places like this. Regardless, my first introduction to it was locally.
Move forward a couple of decades and suddenly I was hearing about something called bath salts. That turned out to not be what I thought it would be (of course now), but was instead some sort of herbal product that turned out to be a powerful drug. This resulted in lots of people acting like zombies (I kid you not) and doing some pretty strange stuff, most of the time having to be naked to do so (supposedly the stuff made on extremely hot inside). This one I know started in central New York in some fashion because it made national news, and I wasn’t in the state when it became a big deal.
Then yesterday I read about this stuff known as synthetic marijuana (as if the original stuff just isn’t enough) that’s so powerful that a lot of people are ending up in local emergency rooms. People are actually foaming at the mouth. This also made national news, only it’s occurring all over the state so at least it’s not just the Syracuse area this time around.
Can someone help me out with this one?
I’ve never taken any drugs other than prescription or over the counter stuff for pain. I’ve never even had a drink. I don’t understand this thing about using a foreign substance to get high. Whenever I need to feel good, I go find something sweet.
That a lot of this is happening in the Syracuse area is problematic to me, although it’s possible that the same type of thing happens almost everywhere, just that I’m living here and hearing about it. Yet, I spent 18 months working in Memphis and you heard about “regular” drug busts, but nothing about synthetic stuff down that way.
I’ve also heard more lately about this thing called meth, which I’m referring to that way because it seems it can be made in many different ways. What I heard is that it can make a teenager look decades older in a relatively short time, and in some cases people are waiting for their bodies to give out on them and kill them within a few years. Someone asked a meth person why they took it and was told that it gives them a greater rush than having sex and that the feeling lasts longer. Supposedly police can tell a meth user by looking at their teeth; I saw a picture and it’s absolutely disgusting.
My mind can’t get behind this because I’ve always needed to have some kind of control over my life. These folks, once they start they lose all control, even if they think they have it. Cant get a job, can’t keep their minds clear enough to learn anything… talk about your gateway drug!
I have no answers, only questions. None of this affects my life in any way. I’ve never known of any drug users in my circles. It’s not something I’ve seen all that often in my life; the worst I’ve ever seen were a couple of folks I knew who used cocaine in the 80’s, which was easy to figure out, but that stuff seems to be baby food when compared to what’s available now.
All I know is that I hope someone figures out why people in this area seem to need it, seem to figure out new ways of making more of it and make it stronger, and how to stop it.
Syracuse is not a drug capital–it is experiencing the same problems that most cities in America face. In my work in low income neighborhoods of Syracuse, marijuana and crack cocaine were prevalent: both for the ability to forget about life for awhile–and because it was often the only job available to young men–men often with criminal records and not much schooling.
Heroin has become the drug of choice in urban America–often in middle class suburbs as well. Many people get hooked on the opioids in prescription painkillers used after surgeries–and when they can no longer either get a doctor to prescribe or the cost becomes prohibitive, they turn to the MUCH cheaper heroin.
The rise of synthetic marijuana is attributable to many factors–it is legal to buy and possess, so folks with records not wanting to get caught often go that route, risking the side effects that are non-existent for organic marijuana. Also, conventional drug tests do not pick up synthetic marijuana use–so job applicants and parolees also are attracted to the drug. The drugs are illegal to sell, but the makers can tinker with the chemical properties of the drug so quickly that the law outlaws one form of the drug today and the manufacturers respond with a “new” drug tomorrow.
Methamphetamine (meth, crystal meth) is a drug that is most prevalent in rural areas–largely because one of the constituent ingredients to cook it up used to be anhydrous ammonia–which a lot of farmers stored out in tanks in their fields. Recent innovations that allow the creation process for meth to be done without anhydrous ammonia or to have a very involved cooking process are causing fears that meth might make inroads into the cities.
Good answers Phil. Still, it’s intriguing that some of these things seem to pop up in our area first, or at least when it hits the news it’s because of us. Gotta admit that’s freaky timing…
Yeah, we have been hitting the synthetic marijuana really hard in CNY. The paper just published a story about a ring that they busted for pushing the stuff here–and they all lived in So. California!
I never thought about where this stuff was being made. Maybe CNYers can’t handle it… nah! lol