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Officials in the Denver suburb of Englewood shut down the city library last week within a couple of hours of getting test results Wednesday showing that the contamination in the facility’s restrooms exceeded state thresholds, city spokesman Chris Harguth said.

TIL there are state thresholds for meth contamination.
According to the city, there have been 12 to 15 incidents of people possibly doing meth in the bathroom that were reported to security.
On two separate occasions, city employees were evaluated and cleared for health concerns after experiencing symptoms of possible meth exposure, the city said. The employees were medically cleared by paramedics. >

This shit is one of the countless reasons why safe injection sites are becoming a thing. Gives them somewhere safe, clean, and designed to help if something goes wrong, not to mention open offers of counseling, drug testing, even stuff like job and housing help and so on, to keep them from dying and give them a chance to get their addiction under control. >

No, not really. Meth is one of those drugs that works however you get it into your body. Smoke it, snort it, eat it, brett kavanaugh boof it, there's no wrong way to do meth! >

"Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew... Lovely big golden meth with a nice piece of fried fish." >

"Gives it to us raw, and wriggling!" >

Kinda like the worms under your skin >

Used to do security for a library in my old town and the amount of used needles and ODs I found during a shift was staggering. One of our conference rooms was infested with bed bugs and was shut down for quite some time. Cops were constantly on patrol there. I only lasted about 30 days in that job >

A lot of people don’t realize how many dirty needles end up in the creeks and waterways here in Boulder. Not to mentioned the homeless people pooping in the creek. 
Still all the college kids love to go tubing and parents bring their kids to splash around in the water. >

Funny you mention boulder and sadly I’m not surprised. The library I worked at was in Fort Collins. >

Damn, even libraries can’t get uncontaminated meth these days? >

Get these libraries the meth they deserve! >

Reading Rainbow told me I could get twice as high, and I’m holding libraries to that. >

Just take a look, it's time to cook.... >

A meth-laced rainbow! >

I work in public libraries. People do drugs in the bathroom all the time. I didn’t know someone was supposed to be testing anything. I don’t think we even thought it. We’re just like, “ughh… smells like drugs again”. Even for bed bugs we just close certain sections of the library. >

Wait- the library gets bedbugs? >

All the time. Homeless people spend all day, every day hanging out on our furniture (and we really love being a safe, warm place for them be). Do not sit on anything fabric in the library. >

Someone's reading ALL THE BOOKS >

It’s a shame. We used to frequent our local library, attend events with our kid, and donate. We stopped going because we noticed that it became a daily hangout for heroin/meth heads to get out of the cold and sleep.
Edit: while I believe a public library should be fair use for anyone…I also believe it should provide for a stress free / safe environment. Seeing people shooting up heroin in the stalls or tweaking out is not ideal >

When I lived in SoCal I rode down to a library about an hour away. There was one a mile down the road but holy shit it might as well have been a methadone clinic. >

The downtown library doubles as a shelter now, there was even an uproar lately because it was pouring rain and storming and the cops showed up to clear everyone out so the mayor city could do a presser on how they're "helping" the homeless during these critical times.
Also when the wind blows really hard from the right direction, there's a steel art structure that covers the top of the library and it wails like one million demons in unison. You can hear it from a mile away >

Oooh, resonance frequency. >

/r/evilbuildings >

Surprised at how active it is, guess people really love evil buildings. Trains too apparently. >

Why would trains love evil buildings? >

"They also pointed out that standards for how much meth contamination is acceptable"
I really had no idea that there was an acceptable level of meth contamination. >

According to this article from the Atlantic, there are apparently substantial differences in the effects of meth use based on what else is in it (with potentially more dangerous neurological symptoms). >

The standards the original article refers to are not about meth being contaminated with additives, but buildings being contaminated with meth >

I went to Denver, Colo springs, Ft Carson, Aurora and the various burbs of colorado about 10 years ago for work and it was a fucking utopia, EXTREMELY nice areas, clean cities, beautiful parks downtown.
Went back in 2019 and 2021 and uhhhhhh.... WTF happened? did a cargo plane airdrop bums and junkies onto all the overpasses? >

Meths purity has increased dramatically, the potency has derailed many lives, this is just one of the issues but a big part of it. >

Yup. The increased potency also means the negative psychological effects set in in only a fraction of the time. People are hitting levels of drug induced psychosis in months of use that one used to only see in lifelong addicts. >

I'm not sure it's the purity. I kindle if doubt pharmaceutical grade meth (brand name Desoxyn) has this problem. The problem is the contaminants from the substrates now used to synthesize meth, which includes cyanide, acetone, racing fuel, et al. It's causing brain damage resulting in symptoms of psychosis that don't respond to antipsychotics and which don't always resolve when someone stops using meth. >

Yep, this is it. And it’s only getting worse. I see and work with them daily and have for almost 13 years professionally and another decade off and on prior. The homeless crisis is mostly worsening due to meth, folks using for any real length of time may be so permanently damaged that stopping use will still leave a human that can’t function in any capacity that leaves them able to care for themselves. 
I have gone from hopeful to hopeless with this community of people and have no fucking clue past locking them all up how to make it better. They honestly have no desire to change and blame all the people trying to help them for everything they are doing. We have a dental clinic, I had one of them tell me he’s starting to have problems with his teeth because of our dental clinic. I asked him to remind me what his drug of choice is and he said meth. I asked what does meth do to your teeth and he shut down. >

Very interesting to hear your perspective.
People act like locking up hard drug users is cruel or something.. it’s very arguably cruel NOT to lock them up. Talking to an addict’s young son, all he wanted was for his mom to be locked up so that she could break her addiction. They never did (this was in San Francisco) and she overdosed once, causing brain damage, and finally died on her next major overdose. >

I’m not for locking up all drug users. (If they’re harming others through burglary, vandalism, assaults, absolutely lock them up) Meth today is just different, it’s not the old ephedrine based meth that was bad enough. It’s causing, very likely, brain damage that could be irreversible. The increase in paranoia, schizophrenic symptoms, etc is pronounced and troubling. The violent behavior is also increased. We used to be able to temporarily hotel homeless clients while we worked to find an affordable option, none of the hotels will work with us any longer because so often the rooms were trashed.And I don’t mean just messy, I mean destroyed. We don’t even offer that option any longer. 
Frankly, most are so paranoid they don’t want to be housed anyway. >

You said that you don’t know how to treat them short of locking them up. So what else do you think should happen?
That hotel program sounds like a recipe for disaster from the beginning. 
I think forced rehab is the best option, if a town can afford it. It’s incredibly resource-intensive to provide.
Edit: also that’s really sad about the brain damage. Imo, that’s why a hard line has to be taken here. It’s really sad to see families being destroyed this way. I was assaulted by a drug-crazed woman on the street, and i found out later she was the mother of a very young child. Horrible to imagine how that kid is being treated due to these drugs. >

The hotel thing used to be a really great program. Before meth became the chemical disaster it’s evolved to. It’s meth, not other substances, that’s the root of the disaster we are faced with. I absolutely advocate for locking meth users up. I never felt that way about addiction to any other substance use. For all other addiction, treatment, including forced treatment, is what the data supports. Medical and psychological treatment. For meth, nothing seems to work for long term users. I’m fine with locking them up. I hate it, but it’s becoming the only logical and reasonable option. I could see testing for permanent psychological issues, maybe even having wards just for them but they are causing far too much damage in society and something has to give. It’s not sustainable as it is. >

That’s interesting. What about heroin users? That was the drug of choice of the woman I mentioned earlier. People dying of heroin overdose in hotel rooms seems like that would also not work in that program.
That’s sad that nothing works for long-term meth users. I knew someone who got into meth, and he was a brilliant guy, perfect SAT scores even. Very sad. >

We used the conference room at the Boulder library on canyon. Someone was passed out in one of the bathroom stalls while another was vomiting everywhere. A lot of homeless people outside on the Boulder creek trail some definitely violent. The city keeps spending money on new medians for the road and doesn’t address this at all. The libraries aren’t the only area with this issue. The bus stops are bad, the paved trails are bad, the sidewalks are bad… >

Speaking of, is there still the strip club in North Boulder right across from the shelter unironically named the Bustop? I never went in but man Boulder did have some wild transients back in the day. >

No, it’s gone. Shelter is next to apartments called the bus stop, where the strip club Bustop used to be, and is where the SKIP bus ends it’s north route.