Meth addicts are being paid to detox in drug-plagued California as part of a new experimental program.
Participants must provide a negative urine sample to prove they are not using methamphetamine or crack cocaine, and receive up to $26.50 per test.
But in a potential loophole, samples are allowed to test positive for other types of drugs, including opioids like fentanyl and heroin.
The taxpayer-funded project is being carried out in 19 California counties and about 2,700 drug addicts have signed up so far.
The graph above shows how drug overdose deaths have increased since 2002, reaching a record level in 2022.
A certain sheriff’s deputy compiled these shocking before and after mugshots in 2004 to show how methamphetamine wreaks havoc on addicts’ appearance in an attempt to deter people from the drug.
It is being funded through Medi-Cal, the state’s taxpayer-funded program for low-income people, and California is expected to allocate $61 million to it.
Program participants admitted that they were initially skeptical of the multimillion-dollar price tag of such an experimental program.
“You’re talking about a lot of money,” said John Duff, senior program director at Common Goals, an outpatient drug and alcohol counseling center in Grass Valley, Nevada County. Los Angeles Times. “It was a hard sell.”
The program comes in response to one of the worst drug crises in the United States. Deaths related to cocaine, methamphetamines and other stimulants have skyrocketed in the last decade.
In 2021, there were nearly 6,000 opioid-related overdose deaths in California, compared to a total of 80,401 in the United States.
In just three years, between 2019 and 2021, opioid-related deaths in California increased 121 percent, according to the state health department. The vast majority of these deaths were related to fentanyl.
In 2021, 65 percent of drug-related overdose deaths involved stimulants, up from 22 percent in 2011.
In California’s Sierra Nevada, users say they can get methamphetamine almost as easily as beer or marijuana.
Quinn Coburn is one of the people enrolled in the new program and has used methamphetamine for most of her adulthood.
He has been to prison five times for trafficking marijuana, methamphetamine and heroin.
Now 56, Coburn wants to quit drugs for good, after trying to kick his habit countless times.
He says the financial experiment is helping. “It’s that little detail that makes me responsible,” the former construction worker said.
Coburn wants to stay clean to fight criminal charges for drug and firearm possession, something he strongly denies.
They gave him $10 for every clean urine test he took during his first week in the program.
Pictured above is a man on the streets of San Francisco during the US drug crisis.
Drug addicts and homeless people in the SOMA (South of Market) district, San Francisco
More than 849 people are expected to die from drug overdoses in 2023, on track to surpass the current record of 720 deaths in 2020.
Fentanyl-related deaths and other overdoses are rising once again in San Francisco
The amount per test increases over the weeks: participants get $11.50 per test in the second week, $13 in the third week, up to $26.50.
Former drug addicts can earn up to $599 a year. Mr. Coburn completed 20 weeks of the program and earned $521.50 as of mid-May.
Participants also receive at least six months of additional behavioral health treatment after urine testing stops.
California has spent enormous amounts of money and effort to reduce opioid addiction and fentanyl trafficking, but stimulant use is also a big problem.
The rate of Californians dying from stimulants doubled between 2019 and 2023, according to the state Department of Health Care Services.
These photographs, taken just three years apart, show how methamphetamine use has changed this woman’s appearance in a short space of time.
Pictured three years apart, this woman’s skin has been devastated by her methamphetamine addiction.
To qualify for the program, participants must have moderate to severe stimulant use disorder, with symptoms that include strong drug cravings and putting drugs before personal health and well-being.
Experts have said that incentive programs that offer participants a reward, even a modest one, can have a profound effect, especially among methamphetamine users.
Previous research has found that such programs can result in long-term abstinence.
Mr Duff, who runs the center where Mr Coburn receives treatment, said: “The way stimulants act on the brain is different to how opiates or alcohol act on the brain.
“The reward system in the brain is more activated in amphetamine users, so receiving $10 or $20 at a time is more attractive than sitting in group therapy.”
He became convinced of the program’s success when users returned with negative urine tests.
‘People are constantly showing up. To stop stimulants it is proving very effective.
It is not clear why the urine test only needs to be free of stimulants for participants to receive the reward, but it may be that the incentive model is more effective against stimulants, as Mr Duff said.