Roy Anthony Scott's death is not an anomaly.
Howard Center for Investigative Reporting in Action Cooperation with Associated Pressand 11 others confirmed Number of deaths from police encounters other than shootings in Nevada from 2012 to 2021. Like Scott, who died in 2019 after an encounter with Las Vegas police, five of the dead had a history of mental illness or meth at the time of their deaths.
These findings track broader data on national police deaths. A November 2016 study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that between 2009 and 2012, one in five people who died in police encounters (mostly shootings) had mental illness or drug-induced symptoms. It was found that there were signs of destructive behavior.
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, the largest police force in Nevada, required crisis intervention training for all officers in 2014 and launched a Behavioral Health Unit (BHU) in 2021. He also created an overdose response team and invested resources in the opioid crisis. A public awareness campaign about fentanyl.
But like other law enforcement agencies in the United States, Las Vegas lacks meth-specific training, even though meth has become cheaper and more powerful, especially in Nevada. The department's policy for responding to people in behavioral crisis calls for physical restraint to ensure prompt compliance. Experts say such tactics are less likely to cause deaths among stimulant users, such as meth, given the cardiovascular stress, combined with the dangers of police enforcement and the paranoia that meth can cause. It is said that this may be the cause.
“That's the crux of the problem,” explains Richard Strip, a forensic toxicologist and professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “Law enforcement and medical professionals trying to protect other individuals or trying to protect themselves only compounds the problem.”
new, more powerful stimulants
While drugs like opioids and fentanyl dominate the headlines, the number of overdose deaths from methamphetamines, primarily methamphetamines, has increased dramatically in the United States between 2015 and 2019, according to the National Institutes of Health. It has nearly tripled.
Stimulants increase the activity of the brain chemicals dopamine and norepinephrine. When you take stimulants, your body's systems speed up, your blood pressure increases, and your heart rate increases. The effects of stimulants begin to wear off after about 12 hours, but continued use can put stress on your cardiovascular system in the long term. Chronic effects include arteriosclerosis, organ damage, and heart failure.
However, the increase in meth use and addiction is not as dramatic as the rise in overdoses, suggesting that something else is making meth more dangerous.
Richard Lawson, previously co-director of the Comprehensive Substance Abuse Program at the University of California, Los Angeles and an expert in treating patients with stimulant use disorder, said that 20 years ago, meth was only 50% pure; He said the efficacy was also weak. But things have changed since then.
“The methamphetamine currently on the streets is particularly harmful because it is near 100% purity and potency levels,” Lawson explained.
In recent years, methamphetamine production has largely shifted from small-scale clandestine operations in the United States to superlabs south of the border, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. And one of the main routes into the United States is across the southern border through Arizona to Las Vegas.
Current Mexican meth is also produced using a variety of precursor chemicals. This manufacturing process, known as the P2P method, isolates the drug's D isomer compound, which is responsible for the “high” feeling. Stimulants that are considered “100% potent” consist almost exclusively of the D isomer.
“So people who are currently using methamphetamine, especially people who are using it daily or injecting it, actually have much larger volumes in their brains and bodies,” Lawson explained. did.
When police respond to people high on meth, said Jamie Ross, executive director of PACT Coalition for Safe and Drug-Free Communities, a Nevada nonprofit focused on drug abuse prevention, , they are more likely to exhibit erratic and violent behavior. .
“There are newer, more powerful stimulants,” she said. “And, anecdotally, when you talk to people in treatment, they say psychosis is on the rise.”
Stimulant-induced psychosis varies in severity and duration. Dr. James Walsh, a family physician who specializes in addiction treatment in Seattle, said symptoms can range from “vague paranoia like, 'They're coming to get me,'” to “hallucinations and seeing and hearing things.” He says it covers a wide range of things.
If someone has a mental illness like schizophrenia that predisposes them to psychosis, “meth will make the symptoms worse,” he added.
Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that stimulant use often co-occurs with mental illness, and some officials who work with this population believe that people with untreated or undertreated mental health They say they may use illegal drugs to self-medicate their problems.
But while methamphetamine use can cause psychosis and long-term organ damage, experts disagree on whether methamphetamine addiction alone can kill a person.
“There are a lot of reports that methamphetamine deaths are on the rise. To be honest, I'm a little skeptical about that,” Walsh said. “The autopsy numbers are very unreliable.”
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Reporter Taylor Stevens contributed to this article. The program, produced by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, is a Scripps Howard tribute to the late news industry executive and pioneer Roy W. Howard. This is an initiative of the foundation.Contact information [email protected] or on X (formerly Twitter) @HowardCenterASU.
