Hot weather and crystal meth don’t mix – the death rates prove it

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On a sweltering day during Phoenix’s hottest June on record, a 38-year-old man collapsed under a freeway bridge and a 41-year-old woman was found slumped outside a business.

Both had used methamphetamine before dying from an increasingly dangerous mix of rising temperatures and stimulants.

Meth is increasingly emerging as a factor in the deaths of people who died from heat-related causes, according to an analysis of data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Death certificates show that about one in five heat-related deaths in recent years involved methamphetamine. In Arizona, Texas, Nevada and California, officials found the drug in nearly a third of heat deaths in 2023.

Meth is more common in heat-related deaths than the deadly opioid fentanyl. As a stimulant, it increases body temperature, reduces the brain’s ability to regulate body heat and makes it harder for the heart to compensate for extreme heat.

If hot weather has already raised a person’s body temperature, consuming alcohol or opioids can worsen the physical effects, “but meth would be the one you’d be most concerned about,” says Bob Anderson, chief of statistical analysis at the National Center for Health. Statistics.

The trend has emerged because a synthetic drug manufactured south of the border by Mexican drug cartels has largely replaced the domestic version of meth fictionalized in the TV series “Breaking Bad.” Usually smoked in a glass pipe, a single dose can cost as little as a few dollars.

At the same time, human-induced climate change has made it much easier to die from heat-related causes in places like Phoenix, Las Vegas and California’s southeastern desert. This has been the hottest summer on Earth ever.

Phoenix baked in triple-digit heat for 113 straight days, reaching 117 degrees Fahrenheit (47.2 degrees Celsius) in late September — unusual even for a city synonymous with heat. The triple digits have also continued in October: this week the National Weather Service again warned of excessive heat.

“Putting on a jacket can increase body temperature in a cold room. When it’s warm outside, we can take the coat off,” explains Rae Matsumoto, dean of the Daniel K. Inouye College of Pharmacy at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. But people who use the stimulant outside in the heat “can’t take off their meth jacket.”

These fatalities are particularly prevalent in the Southwest, where meth overdoses have generally risen since the mid-2000s.

In Maricopa County, America’s most popular metropolitan area, substances such as street drugs, alcohol and certain prescription medications for psychiatric conditions and blood pressure control were involved in about two-thirds, or 419, of the 645 heat-related deaths documented last year. Meth was found in about three-quarters of these drug cases and was often the leading cause of death, public health data show. Fentanyl was found in just under half of them.

In Pima County, home to Tucson, Arizona’s second-most populous city, methamphetamine was a factor in a quarter of the 84 heat-related deaths reported so far this year, the medical examiner’s office said.

In metro Las Vegas, heat was a factor in the 294 deaths investigated by the Clark County coroner’s office last year, and 39% involved illegal drugs, prescription drugs and alcohol. Of these, meth was found in three quarters.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration notes in its 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment that 31% of all drug-related deaths in the U.S. are now caused by nervous system-accelerating stimulants, primarily meth. More than 17,000 people in the US died from fatal overdoses and poisonings related to stimulants in the first half of 2023, according to preliminary CDC data.

Although overdoses are more commonly associated with opiates like fentanyl, medical professionals say a meth overdose is possible if a large amount is ingested. Higher blood pressure and accelerated heart rate can then cause a heart attack or stroke.

“All your normal physiological ways of coping with heat are compromised by methamphetamine use,” says Dr. Aneesh Narang, an emergency room physician at Banner University Medical Center in downtown Phoenix.

Narang, a member of a committee that reviews overdose deaths, said the “vast majority” of heat stroke patients seen in his hospital’s emergency department this summer had used street drugs, mostly methamphetamine.

Due to its proximity to the U.S.-Mexico border, Phoenix is ​​considered a “source city” where large amounts of newly smuggled meth are stored and packaged into relatively small doses for distribution, according to Det. Matt Shay, a veteran narcotics investigator with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.

“It’s an amazing amount of money that’s coming in all the time every day,” Shay said. “It’s also very cheap.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection authorities seized approximately 164,000 pounds (about 74,000 kilograms) of meth at the U.S.-Mexico border this past fiscal year ending September 30, up from the 140,000 pounds (about 63,500 kilograms) seized in the was intercepted in the previous twelve months.

And vendors often target the homeless, Shay said.

“It’s a customer base that’s easy to find and exploit,” Shay said. “If you’re an enterprising young drug dealer, all you need is some form of transportation and you’re just driving around and they’re swarming your car.”

Jason Elliott, a 51-year-old unemployed machinist, said he has heard of several heat-related deaths involving meth during his three years on the streets of Phoenix.

“It’s pretty typical,” Elliot said, noting that stimulants allow people to stay awake and alert to avoid being robbed in shelters or outdoors. “What else can you do? You have stuff; you go to sleep, you wake up and your stuff is gone.

Dr. Nick Staab, assistant medical director for the Maricopa County Department of Public Health, said brochures were printed and distributed at cooling centers this summer to spread the word about the risk of using stimulants and certain prescription drugs in extreme heat.

But it is unclear how many will be achieved. Some cooling centers may not welcome people who use drugs. A better solution, according to Stacey Cope, director of capacity building and education at the harm reduction nonprofit Sonoran Prevention Works, is to lower barriers to entry so that people most at risk “are not expected to be abstinent from drugs, or they don’t do that.” I expect to leave during the hottest part of the day.”