Drugs?

[JLatelee]

Originally Posted by Joe P

This Meth thing has me scratching my head. When I first moved here I saw the Meth Free TN and Meth Kills advertisements and thought heck, the stuff must be everywhere. I mean, coming here from Florida it seemed like Tn would be the meth capital of the countr and that you'd be able to buy bags of it out of vending machines on street corners.

After the first few weeks, then the first month and now after three months, I still have not found any.....not that I'm really looking. I have hypothesized a few possibilities:

1) It's a very rural problem. I mean way rural. Like the segment of society that doesn't work, come into the city (or even the outskirts) and pretty much stays in their shack in the wods.

2) This one might make me sound like a "tin foil hat" type but I have to wonder. See, Florida's equivelant of "The Meth problem That Will Ruin Society" is drunk driving. I'd say on a per-mile traveled basis you see the same number of anti-meth billboards as you do in Florida against drunk driving. Much like I came here expecting the streets to be littered with meth, someone from here might move to Florida and think every motorist is intoxicated. The driving habits in a lot of Florida might help reinforce this belief, yet I'm digressing.
Anyway, I have to wonder if perhaps the different states don't recieve some sort of federal funding for their issues. I know, it might be a stretch but is it not out of the realm of possibility that there is some money at the root of the "problem" and meth happens to be the pet-project for this particular state? I'm not denying that it's here, but could it be less of a problem than we might think so that the state can get funds from the Fed?

Anyway, since I've been here I've met people from all walks of life and have yet to meet anyone that jumped out at me as a meth-head. Since I'm in construction, and drugs usually follow my industry, I think I would have picked up on it by now if it was that prevelant. For those who can not ID a meth user, they are typically hyper, very skinny, bad teeth and edgy. Plenty of people around here with bad teeth but not does one symptom an addition make.

Since moving to Marion County (Tracy City / Monteagle area) I have yet to see someone that looks drugged either, yet I've noted all the same signs.
Also, I read one of the other posts noting the number of busts by county. Another way to look it the statistics is that a county with a lot of reported busts my be one where the police are aggressively cleaning it up and therefore reporting it as opposed to a county where it may be rampant but nothing is being done or reported.
Hard to know, but I do know that the locals here report that the problem has become a lot better over the past couple of years.

[quakeroats]

I just registered but have browsed the forums for a while. I thought I would register so I could put some input on this so people are not misinformed. I was in high school just a few years ago in murfreesboro, and I had my fair share of experience with drugs. I don't know how it shows no arrests for people selling since it is not uncommon at all, but I don't know of any problems with meth labs in city limits. As for other drugs, I would say it is a little above average for a suburb but having MTSU here can explain some of that. For those of you that believe that rutherford county schools are perfect and what not, it's not quite that perfect. When I was in school, drug busts were not uncommon, but it wasn't something that occurred every week. The education was great though and all my peers actually had aspirations in life unlike many schools in rural TN where they really don't care about school since they are just plan on working somewhere in the agricultural department. A majority of students do attend college after high school and especially now that the Hope(tn lottery) Scholarship is in place and is almost a full scholarship to MTSU. It is a lot safer than living in Nashville, but there are probably better suburbs to raise a family around Nashville though they may not have the conveniences of the boro.