11 ms·

It's interesting to note that as methamphetamine and amphetamine were more regulated in the 50s and 60s, it became more prevalent. Then in order to stamp out il

by j_m_b 4y ago

It's interesting to note that as methamphetamine and amphetamine were more regulated in the 50s and 60s, it became more prevalent. Then in order to stamp out illegal production, the precursor chemicals were monitored. So what happens? Production becomes more dangerous. Solution: Just make every kind of drug legal to produce, but regulate the purity. Be very explicit about the dangers. The only thing prohibition does is make drug consumption and production dangerous and needlessly expensive.

alpineidyll3 4y ago
Adderall anyone? There's a panoply of legal ways to obtain amphetamines, but the US medical system is far less competent at customer service than the black market due to regulatory capture. I think it's critical to appreciate that Physician Regulations, the AMA, etc. are the main culprits here. How they avoid getting properly blamed for things like the opioid epidemic, I have no idea.
- brookst 4y ago
  I suspect that most people who understand the role AMA plays in prohibition and drug abuse also aren’t super interested in focusing on blame. The whole thing is a complicated system of perverse incentives and counterproductive policies. It doesn’t really matter if the AMA is 20% or 60% to blame.
  - alpineidyll3 4y ago
    Blame is a poor choice of words. Ideally we could stop letting physicians write their own regulations, and instead have at least one mechanism with incentive to promote national health, rather than the medical industry complex.
    - starkd 4y ago
      Traditionally, doctors, as men of science, have been given wide latitude to prescribe, since there is no one treatment that is good for everyone. Unfortunately, that seems to be changing, as doctors are expected to adhere to a standard regimen of treatment options. It is the dangers of institutionalization of our healthcare.
      - alpineidyll3 4y ago
        Calling doctors men of science is extraordinarily generous. Scientists do things like collect data to test hypotheses. The ama lobbies aggressively against national medical record standardization etc. At the end of the day, it's about whether the person making decisions has good incentives. And that's not the case in the present system.
        starkd 4y ago
        I was being a bit facetious in using the term, but that was the image given to doctors once upon a time. Nevertheless, my point is that doctors are not mere technicians applying handbook remedies. They are generally given wide latitude to try novel ideas when appropriate. Unfortunately, that appears to be changing.
cjbgkagh 4y ago
I think that if we legalize dangerous addictive drugs then we might as well legalize all medications/drugs by which point the medical establishment loses a big chunk of the income that it gets from being a monopoly supplier. I wish society was mature enough for full legalization, but often those pushing for legalization underplay the negative problems associated with drug use. Particularly for that 'harmless plant' marijuana. A university acquaintance went acute schizophrenic shortly after developing a pot habit, that could be a coincidence but the timing is suspicious. A second cousin became mentally retarded immediately after smoking a joint. He's now a 30 year old who can't tie his own shoes. Big businesses already have enough power to shape politics, we're still in the process of stamping out cigarettes. I've noticed a lot of smoking on Netflix so clearly they're still working on a comeback. How long until they put coke back into Coca-Cola and funding scientific studies about how a bump a day is actually good for you. Then there is the seriousness of surreptitiously giving someone an addictive substance, to put the hook into them, which I consider to be interfering to the working of the brain and akin to murder. At the moment the focus is around the drug being illegal as opposed to the deleterious effect it can have. Criminal gangs use this tactic fairly frequently as an alternative to killing someone but I believe it should solicit the same punishment.
- awillen 4y ago
  A lot of people who are against legalization make this argument that those who are for it ignore the negative consequences, but for large swathes of pro-legalization people, that's just not true. I know there are negative consequences, and I know that in a very small number of people marijuana can cause serious consequences (and in larger numbers of people, harder drugs like cocaine and heroin can cause more serious consequences). But the fact that things can cause negative consequences is not sufficient reason to ban them. The obvious example here is alcohol - it is beyond clear from data that alcohol is incredibly harmful. It is beyond clear that it is more harmful than at least some banned substances (marijuana, LSD, MDMA). It is likely that it is more harmful than harder substances like cocaine, but with less data on those we can't say for sure. So yes, there are negative consequences, but as a society we have decided that we allow people to do things that cause negative consequences (as evidenced by the legality of alcohol). There are limits on that, but with alcohol as a line by which to judge those limits, it's clear that to have any kind of coherent public policy, marijuana should be legal. Or, of course, alcohol could be made illegal. The point is that if you think that alcohol should be legal but other drugs should not, you're just engaging in hypocrisy.
djha-skin 4y ago
This implies that the dangerous production is the fault of the government. It is the fault of those who want to produce it. They are making bad choices. A responsible government should not make it easy to make bad choices.
- nibbleshifter 4y ago
  You are implying there is anything inherently bad about amphetamines.
- anonymoushn 4y ago
  Sure, and prohibition also didn't cause any harm to people who didn't drink, mandating the addition of poison to rubbing alcohol using legislation doesn't cause anyone to be poisoned, etc.
- uptownJimmy 4y ago
  "They are making bad choices." This sort of reductionist, simplistic "reasoning" is going to be the death of us all. Trying to find a moral failing in every human weakness, every human ignorance, every human desperation? It's just disgusting.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> It's interesting to note that as methamphetamine and amphetamine were more regulated in the 50s and 60s, it became more prevalent This is an extreme example of “correlation does not equal causation” The regulation came from the expanding popularity of these drugs. It didn’t cause it. Likewise, regulating precursor chemicals wasn’t some causative factor in further drug use. It was the next level of regulations added in response to the increasing drug use. Regulations and limited availability don’t cause more people to use drugs. That’s not only an illogical conclusion, it ignores the order of how things happened. The increased availability of fentanyl has been a driving force in more people using opioids in general. Note that most people aren’t seeking out fentanyl (though many are), they believe themselves to be purchasing more traditional opioids. The increased availability of fake pills has definitely increased opioid use. The idea that opening the floodgates to more access will somehow decrease usage is inconsistent with evidence and inconsistent with reality. It also just doesn’t make sense.
- mxkopy 4y ago
  To steel-man OP's argument, > Regulations and limited availability don’t cause more people to use drugs. All else held equal, all this does is increase the price of doing drugs. There are arguments to be made about the history of the demand for drugs. I think we can safely say, though, that it stays at a stable 'Some people really want to do them'. Whether or not that means growing a plant or potentially getting shot depends on the regulations.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
I'm generally in favor of drug legalization and/or decriminalization, but I'd draw a line at meth. There is a reason for the "Meth, not even once" PSAs and memes. The drug is really just that addictive that it can ruin people's lives by getting them hooked after just one session. Even if you disagree with my stance, I think it would be a grave mistake to not acknowledge that different drugs have different capacities for harm, and the fact is that the addictive nature of meth makes its harm potential astronomical.
- starkd 4y ago
  Libertarians tend to take potential solutions to the extreme, but seldom is anything so ideologically pure. Still, the idea that government can protect people from themselves is a noxious one. Drug legalization is an attractive one for that reason alone, but there are limits. Drug addicts are by definition not rational actors.
  - rubicon33 4y ago
    Presumably they were at one time a “rational actor”. Before the drugs.
  - porknubbins 4y ago
    Yes as libertarian who was offended by the idea of regulating what adults can put in their bodies at home, I have changed my mind after seeing real world consequences. As a young college student its easy to believe some kind of naive model of humans as basically well-intentioned or rational or at least a blank slate. Experience tells me that most illegal drug (and heavy alcohol) use has negative externalities and tends to harm the character of the user over time. An assertion younger me would have probably found offensively moralistic (what is “character” anyway?) but here we are.
    - starkd 4y ago
      You just described my history on the subject. I once believed that too.
    - 4y ago
scythe 4y ago
>It's interesting to note that as methamphetamine and amphetamine were more regulated in the 50s and 60s, it became more prevalent. Then in order to stamp out illegal production, the precursor chemicals were monitored. So what happens? Production becomes more dangerous. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good Methamphetamine wasn't the only drug being regulated in the '50s and '60s. The other stimulants, like cocaine, were restricted at the same time. But methamphetamine is by far the hardest drug to regulate, so its relative prevalence increases. >Solution: Just make every kind of drug legal to produce, but regulate the purity. This is suboptimal. Recreational stimulants are not all the same level of dangerous. (Which would be an incredible coincidence.) The better solution is to find the safer stimulants (possibly variants of methylphenidate) and allow those to be used recreationally, hopefully cutting into the demand for the really bad stuff.
jeffreyrogers 4y ago
There have been countries like China in the Opium Wars period that had limited restrictions on drug consumption. It ended up with a substantial fraction of their population being addicted to opium and basically non-productive. HN is full of smart people who (wrongly I think) assume that because they have the self-control and discipline to either avoid drugs or to use them relatively safely that the rest of the population does too. This does not seem true in my experience. I forget the exact stats but roughly 1 in 20 Americans is an alcoholic, and that's with a drug that humans have been consuming for thousands of years and that has established social rituals around consumption. It seems likely to me that increasing access to and decreasing stigma of highly addictive drugs like opioids or amphetamines will lead to substantial increases in addiction rates.
- _a_a_a_ 4y ago
  > It ended up with a substantial fraction of their population being addicted to opium and basically non-productive. Do you have any evidence of this? I don't believe this to be true from general reading, but can't back it up. My rcollection is that the workers would work hard during the day then smoke opium in the evenings.
  - jeffreyrogers 4y ago
    This article claims 27% of the adult male population were addicts in 1906 (5% of total population): https://sci-hub.se/10.1007/s10571-007-9225-2 https://sci-hub.se/10.1007/s10571-007-9225-2. They don't specifically mention work output but I find it hard to believe that opium addicts were particularly productive in most jobs. I don't think China was very industrialized at the time so I doubt what we would today conceptualize as a "worker" was a substantial fraction of the population at that time.
    - _a_a_a_ 4y ago
      Thankls. I'm a little cautious if this as it relentlessly uses he word 'abuse' instead of 'use', as if it has made up it's mind already. I also found this, which may disagree: https://academic.oup.com/book/32900/chapter-abstract/276622100?redirectedFrom=fulltext https://academic.oup.com/book/32900/chapter-abstract/2766221... The ‘Problem’ of Opium Smoking in Canton Virgil K.Y. Ho Abstract Both the causes of opium consumption, and the allegedly calamitous social, political, economic, and cultural impact of opium smoking on Cantonese society were greatly exaggerated in official propaganda and scholarly writings. Opium served Canton and its urban inhabitants many positive social, cultural, economic, and political purposes, making it difficult to over-simplify the phenomenon of opium smoking as nothing but pernicious. "but I find it hard to believe that opium addicts were particularly productive in most jobs" well maybe, but do you have any experience with this other than feeling? Same has been said of dope smokers, but many are productive. Also in china a few centuries ago there was no welfare state and for most, no work = no food = beg or starve. So as a non-productive person, you didn't live too long (edit: to be fair, this is just my assumption. I may be wrong). Abit more, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium#Recreational_use_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium#Recreational_use_in_Chin... that suggests something very different: It is important to note that "recreational use" of opium was part of a civilized and mannered ritual, akin to an East Asian tea ceremony, prior to the extensive prohibitions that came later.[50] In places of gathering, often tea shops, or a person's home servings of opium were offered as a form of greeting and politeness. [...] The image of seedy underground, destitute smokers were often generated by anti-opium narratives and became a more accurate image of opium use following the effects of large scale opium prohibition in the 1880s.[50][51]
Alex3917 4y ago
> It's interesting to note that as methamphetamine and amphetamine were more regulated in the 50s and 60s, it became more prevalent. ~0.2% of Americans had ever used marijuana when it was first made illegal, whereas ~90% of American adults have used it now.
pstuart 4y ago
Preach! Tax it, regulate it, educate on it. Society is okay with harmful recreational drugs (i.e., alcohol and tobacco), so let's start having grown up conversations about the other ones too. Yes, they can and will be abused but that is a health issue, not a criminal one.
nobody9999 4y ago
>Solution: Just make every kind of drug legal to produce, but regulate the purity. Be very explicit about the dangers. The only thing prohibition does is make drug consumption and production dangerous and needlessly expensive. Absolutely. As is made pretty obvious here[0][1]. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/07/health/fentanyl-xylazine-drug.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/07/health/fentanyl-xylazine-... [1] Archive link: https://archive.is/Sv27y https://archive.is/Sv27y
nobody9999 4y ago
>It's interesting to note that as methamphetamine and amphetamine were more regulated in the 50s and 60s, it became more prevalent. My step-mother noted that she was prescribed amphetamines during all three of her pregnancies (late 50s, early 60s) for "weight control." Which, these days, seems crazy. That said, I'd note that none of my step-brothers seem to have been negatively affected by in-utero exposure to amphetamines.

by j_m_b 4y ago

alpineidyll3 4y ago

Adderall anyone? There's a panoply of legal ways to obtain amphetamines, but the US medical system is far less competent at customer service than the black market due to regulatory capture. I think it's critical to appreciate that Physician Regulations, the AMA, etc. are the main culprits here. How they avoid getting properly blamed for things like the opioid epidemic, I have no idea.

brookst 4y ago
I suspect that most people who understand the role AMA plays in prohibition and drug abuse also aren’t super interested in focusing on blame. The whole thing is a complicated system of perverse incentives and counterproductive policies. It doesn’t really matter if the AMA is 20% or 60% to blame.
- alpineidyll3 4y ago
  Blame is a poor choice of words. Ideally we could stop letting physicians write their own regulations, and instead have at least one mechanism with incentive to promote national health, rather than the medical industry complex.
  - starkd 4y ago
    Traditionally, doctors, as men of science, have been given wide latitude to prescribe, since there is no one treatment that is good for everyone. Unfortunately, that seems to be changing, as doctors are expected to adhere to a standard regimen of treatment options. It is the dangers of institutionalization of our healthcare.
    - alpineidyll3 4y ago
      Calling doctors men of science is extraordinarily generous. Scientists do things like collect data to test hypotheses. The ama lobbies aggressively against national medical record standardization etc. At the end of the day, it's about whether the person making decisions has good incentives. And that's not the case in the present system.
      - starkd 4y ago
        I was being a bit facetious in using the term, but that was the image given to doctors once upon a time. Nevertheless, my point is that doctors are not mere technicians applying handbook remedies. They are generally given wide latitude to try novel ideas when appropriate. Unfortunately, that appears to be changing.

cjbgkagh 4y ago

I think that if we legalize dangerous addictive drugs then we might as well legalize all medications/drugs by which point the medical establishment loses a big chunk of the income that it gets from being a monopoly supplier. I wish society was mature enough for full legalization, but often those pushing for legalization underplay the negative problems associated with drug use. Particularly for that 'harmless plant' marijuana. A university acquaintance went acute schizophrenic shortly after developing a pot habit, that could be a coincidence but the timing is suspicious. A second cousin became mentally retarded immediately after smoking a joint. He's now a 30 year old who can't tie his own shoes. Big businesses already have enough power to shape politics, we're still in the process of stamping out cigarettes. I've noticed a lot of smoking on Netflix so clearly they're still working on a comeback. How long until they put coke back into Coca-Cola and funding scientific studies about how a bump a day is actually good for you. Then there is the seriousness of surreptitiously giving someone an addictive substance, to put the hook into them, which I consider to be interfering to the working of the brain and akin to murder. At the moment the focus is around the drug being illegal as opposed to the deleterious effect it can have. Criminal gangs use this tactic fairly frequently as an alternative to killing someone but I believe it should solicit the same punishment.

awillen 4y ago
A lot of people who are against legalization make this argument that those who are for it ignore the negative consequences, but for large swathes of pro-legalization people, that's just not true. I know there are negative consequences, and I know that in a very small number of people marijuana can cause serious consequences (and in larger numbers of people, harder drugs like cocaine and heroin can cause more serious consequences). But the fact that things can cause negative consequences is not sufficient reason to ban them. The obvious example here is alcohol - it is beyond clear from data that alcohol is incredibly harmful. It is beyond clear that it is more harmful than at least some banned substances (marijuana, LSD, MDMA). It is likely that it is more harmful than harder substances like cocaine, but with less data on those we can't say for sure. So yes, there are negative consequences, but as a society we have decided that we allow people to do things that cause negative consequences (as evidenced by the legality of alcohol). There are limits on that, but with alcohol as a line by which to judge those limits, it's clear that to have any kind of coherent public policy, marijuana should be legal. Or, of course, alcohol could be made illegal. The point is that if you think that alcohol should be legal but other drugs should not, you're just engaging in hypocrisy.

djha-skin 4y ago

This implies that the dangerous production is the fault of the government. It is the fault of those who want to produce it. They are making bad choices. A responsible government should not make it easy to make bad choices.

nibbleshifter 4y ago
You are implying there is anything inherently bad about amphetamines.
anonymoushn 4y ago
Sure, and prohibition also didn't cause any harm to people who didn't drink, mandating the addition of poison to rubbing alcohol using legislation doesn't cause anyone to be poisoned, etc.
uptownJimmy 4y ago
"They are making bad choices." This sort of reductionist, simplistic "reasoning" is going to be the death of us all. Trying to find a moral failing in every human weakness, every human ignorance, every human desperation? It's just disgusting.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

> It's interesting to note that as methamphetamine and amphetamine were more regulated in the 50s and 60s, it became more prevalent This is an extreme example of “correlation does not equal causation” The regulation came from the expanding popularity of these drugs. It didn’t cause it. Likewise, regulating precursor chemicals wasn’t some causative factor in further drug use. It was the next level of regulations added in response to the increasing drug use. Regulations and limited availability don’t cause more people to use drugs. That’s not only an illogical conclusion, it ignores the order of how things happened. The increased availability of fentanyl has been a driving force in more people using opioids in general. Note that most people aren’t seeking out fentanyl (though many are), they believe themselves to be purchasing more traditional opioids. The increased availability of fake pills has definitely increased opioid use. The idea that opening the floodgates to more access will somehow decrease usage is inconsistent with evidence and inconsistent with reality. It also just doesn’t make sense.

mxkopy 4y ago
To steel-man OP's argument, > Regulations and limited availability don’t cause more people to use drugs. All else held equal, all this does is increase the price of doing drugs. There are arguments to be made about the history of the demand for drugs. I think we can safely say, though, that it stays at a stable 'Some people really want to do them'. Whether or not that means growing a plant or potentially getting shot depends on the regulations.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

I'm generally in favor of drug legalization and/or decriminalization, but I'd draw a line at meth. There is a reason for the "Meth, not even once" PSAs and memes. The drug is really just that addictive that it can ruin people's lives by getting them hooked after just one session. Even if you disagree with my stance, I think it would be a grave mistake to not acknowledge that different drugs have different capacities for harm, and the fact is that the addictive nature of meth makes its harm potential astronomical.

starkd 4y ago
Libertarians tend to take potential solutions to the extreme, but seldom is anything so ideologically pure. Still, the idea that government can protect people from themselves is a noxious one. Drug legalization is an attractive one for that reason alone, but there are limits. Drug addicts are by definition not rational actors.
- rubicon33 4y ago
  Presumably they were at one time a “rational actor”. Before the drugs.
- porknubbins 4y ago
  Yes as libertarian who was offended by the idea of regulating what adults can put in their bodies at home, I have changed my mind after seeing real world consequences. As a young college student its easy to believe some kind of naive model of humans as basically well-intentioned or rational or at least a blank slate. Experience tells me that most illegal drug (and heavy alcohol) use has negative externalities and tends to harm the character of the user over time. An assertion younger me would have probably found offensively moralistic (what is “character” anyway?) but here we are.
  - starkd 4y ago
    You just described my history on the subject. I once believed that too.
  - 4y ago

scythe 4y ago

>It's interesting to note that as methamphetamine and amphetamine were more regulated in the 50s and 60s, it became more prevalent. Then in order to stamp out illegal production, the precursor chemicals were monitored. So what happens? Production becomes more dangerous. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good Methamphetamine wasn't the only drug being regulated in the '50s and '60s. The other stimulants, like cocaine, were restricted at the same time. But methamphetamine is by far the hardest drug to regulate, so its relative prevalence increases. >Solution: Just make every kind of drug legal to produce, but regulate the purity. This is suboptimal. Recreational stimulants are not all the same level of dangerous. (Which would be an incredible coincidence.) The better solution is to find the safer stimulants (possibly variants of methylphenidate) and allow those to be used recreationally, hopefully cutting into the demand for the really bad stuff.

jeffreyrogers 4y ago

There have been countries like China in the Opium Wars period that had limited restrictions on drug consumption. It ended up with a substantial fraction of their population being addicted to opium and basically non-productive. HN is full of smart people who (wrongly I think) assume that because they have the self-control and discipline to either avoid drugs or to use them relatively safely that the rest of the population does too. This does not seem true in my experience. I forget the exact stats but roughly 1 in 20 Americans is an alcoholic, and that's with a drug that humans have been consuming for thousands of years and that has established social rituals around consumption. It seems likely to me that increasing access to and decreasing stigma of highly addictive drugs like opioids or amphetamines will lead to substantial increases in addiction rates.

_a_a_a_ 4y ago
> It ended up with a substantial fraction of their population being addicted to opium and basically non-productive. Do you have any evidence of this? I don't believe this to be true from general reading, but can't back it up. My rcollection is that the workers would work hard during the day then smoke opium in the evenings.
- jeffreyrogers 4y ago
  This article claims 27% of the adult male population were addicts in 1906 (5% of total population): https://sci-hub.se/10.1007/s10571-007-9225-2 https://sci-hub.se/10.1007/s10571-007-9225-2. They don't specifically mention work output but I find it hard to believe that opium addicts were particularly productive in most jobs. I don't think China was very industrialized at the time so I doubt what we would today conceptualize as a "worker" was a substantial fraction of the population at that time.
  - _a_a_a_ 4y ago
    Thankls. I'm a little cautious if this as it relentlessly uses he word 'abuse' instead of 'use', as if it has made up it's mind already. I also found this, which may disagree: https://academic.oup.com/book/32900/chapter-abstract/276622100?redirectedFrom=fulltext https://academic.oup.com/book/32900/chapter-abstract/2766221... The ‘Problem’ of Opium Smoking in Canton Virgil K.Y. Ho Abstract Both the causes of opium consumption, and the allegedly calamitous social, political, economic, and cultural impact of opium smoking on Cantonese society were greatly exaggerated in official propaganda and scholarly writings. Opium served Canton and its urban inhabitants many positive social, cultural, economic, and political purposes, making it difficult to over-simplify the phenomenon of opium smoking as nothing but pernicious. "but I find it hard to believe that opium addicts were particularly productive in most jobs" well maybe, but do you have any experience with this other than feeling? Same has been said of dope smokers, but many are productive. Also in china a few centuries ago there was no welfare state and for most, no work = no food = beg or starve. So as a non-productive person, you didn't live too long (edit: to be fair, this is just my assumption. I may be wrong). Abit more, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium#Recreational_use_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium#Recreational_use_in_Chin... that suggests something very different: It is important to note that "recreational use" of opium was part of a civilized and mannered ritual, akin to an East Asian tea ceremony, prior to the extensive prohibitions that came later.[50] In places of gathering, often tea shops, or a person's home servings of opium were offered as a form of greeting and politeness. [...] The image of seedy underground, destitute smokers were often generated by anti-opium narratives and became a more accurate image of opium use following the effects of large scale opium prohibition in the 1880s.[50][51]

Alex3917 4y ago

> It's interesting to note that as methamphetamine and amphetamine were more regulated in the 50s and 60s, it became more prevalent. ~0.2% of Americans had ever used marijuana when it was first made illegal, whereas ~90% of American adults have used it now.

pstuart 4y ago

Preach! Tax it, regulate it, educate on it. Society is okay with harmful recreational drugs (i.e., alcohol and tobacco), so let's start having grown up conversations about the other ones too. Yes, they can and will be abused but that is a health issue, not a criminal one.

nobody9999 4y ago

>Solution: Just make every kind of drug legal to produce, but regulate the purity. Be very explicit about the dangers. The only thing prohibition does is make drug consumption and production dangerous and needlessly expensive. Absolutely. As is made pretty obvious here[0][1]. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/07/health/fentanyl-xylazine-drug.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/07/health/fentanyl-xylazine-... [1] Archive link: https://archive.is/Sv27y https://archive.is/Sv27y

nobody9999 4y ago

>It's interesting to note that as methamphetamine and amphetamine were more regulated in the 50s and 60s, it became more prevalent. My step-mother noted that she was prescribed amphetamines during all three of her pregnancies (late 50s, early 60s) for "weight control." Which, these days, seems crazy. That said, I'd note that none of my step-brothers seem to have been negatively affected by in-utero exposure to amphetamines.