Would Just Airing Out the Home Solve the Problem?

    Second-hand methamphetamine ingestion, can it give you a contact high? Can it cause a heart attack? Can it cause your thoughts to become erratic and bring hallucinations and schizophrenia? Can it affect your ability to memorize and remember? 

   And, if so, at what levels of ingestion? Would living in a home where meth is smoked affect a person just as severely as living in a house where it is actually cooked? It makes sense to me that a person ingesting second-hand smoke is not going to be affected as severely as the person actually smoking the drug, at least not unless the person smoking is doing it so openly and without secret that the air is clearly and heavily contaminated. Also, I think it is a given that meth homes are not as harmful as meth labs. It is not as harmful to live in a home where meth is simply smoked as it is in a home where it is made. Yet, today, few homes are meth labs, moth are simply homes where someone has smoked meth.

   And, yet we shut them down, anyway.

  With homes being shut down for meth contamination, costing landlords in the range of $10,000 to clean, these are important questions. The punishment should be just and fair and not excessive. And, on top of the cleaning expense, the residents are asked to throw away upholstery and clothing that could have been affected. It comes to a point that the landlords and tenants lose much of everything they own because they were in the same house as a person who smoked meth behind their back.

  Now, if the health hazards are so severe, we do want to require such cleanups. But, are they? Or do we need more study to determine how harmful secondhand meth is? Remember, we shut down the home for cleanup just because of the meth clinging to the walls and rugs. If the danger was just from ingesting the air, you would have but to air out the building and clean the AC/heater unit, a simple measure that would hardly cost anything. Opening the windows and turning on a big fan doesn't cost a dime, if you have a big fan. But, the meth hanging to the walls and carpets and everything in the home is considered so severe that we require a $10,000 cleanup.

   Talk all you want about not being soft on crime, but this is taking it too far. And, you are raging more against the homeowners than their renters who caused the problem.

   Do we have any studies backing up the claim that meth hanging on the walls and carpets and clothes and upholstery is dangerous? Or, is this a case of government gone rampant? Is it over-regulation, filled with excessive requirements? Is this a clear example of excessive fines and punishments. Government can be vicious and unfair -- and it is. Should we let it?

  Yes, we need more studies on whether meth hanging to the walls and carpets is so harmful. But, until there are studies to justify the punishment, unreasonable seizures of property should not be allowed. The Constitution protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. How, at this point, do you justify requiring people to throw away all the things in their home when you don't even know if those items are harmful?