Methamphetamine has been a drug which has continually plagued mankind over the 120 years of its existence. Meth's cousin, amphetamine, was first synthesized in 1887 in Germany by Lazar Edeleanu, a Romanian chemist. At first, amphetamine was considered a rather useless chemical byproduct of ephedrine. Amphetamine did not really come into its own until the 1920s. It came to be regarded as a miracle drug with the potential to cure a wide variety of medical conditions. Commercially marketed as Benzedrine, it was mainly intended to clear nasal congestion. Soon, the drug was used by otherwise healthy people simply for its intense high. Amphetamines were also widely used in WW2 as a means of reinvigorating fatigued soldiers. The combination of widespread military use and the voluminous amounts of the drug which became military surplus after the war led to a boom in amphetamine abuse.
All of this was a precursor to methamphetamine; amphetamine heralded the way for its more lethal and......

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Title: Methamphetamine
Approximate Word Count: 822
Approximate Pages: 4 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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