The New York Times frets about a potential European methedemic.

Don't begrudge newspapers for loading their pages with non-news the day after a holiday. Most folks don't work on holidays, so why should journalists? Based on the forest of evergreens planted on the New York Times'Page One the day after Thanksgiving, we can assume that 95 percent of the news staff took the holiday off.

There's no shame in publishing an evergreen the day after a holiday. But the compact between newspapers and readers holds that the holiday evergreens must be stout and sturdy, and not as flimsy and bark-beetle-bitten as was the Times' Nov. 23 story "Europe Fears That Meth Foothold Is Expanding; Drug Scourge Centered in Czech Republic."

Nobody denies the prevalence of methamphetamine use in the Czech Republic, but the notion that the entire continent trembles at the prospect of a meth flood is supported by only one source in the Times article. A more accurate headline for the piece would be "European Fears Meth Foothold Is Expanding."

The Times' source, Thomas Pietschmann, is identified as the main author of the annual United Nations World Drug Report. Pietschmann tells the Times that Czechs are exporting the drug to nearby countries, that Baltic states are producing and exporting to Sweden and Finland, and that two labs have even been found in Vienna.

It all sounds very scary until you read the most recent edition of the United Nations' voluminous report on illicit drugs, of which Pietschmann is the main author. The report takes a much calmer approach in its discussion of European meth, stating:

Methamphetamine production in Europe continues to be limited to a few countries. For 2005 only the Czech Republic and the Republic of Moldova reported dismantling methamphetamine labs. Over the past decade, the Czech Republic and the Republic of Moldova and Slovakia have reported lab seizures consistently. Occasional lab seizures have been made in the Ukraine, Germany, the UK, Lithuania and Bulgaria. [Emphasis added.]

On this note, a U.S. State Department report from 2006 held that the "usage and addiction rates of heroin and pervitine [methamphetamine] have stabilized or slightly decreased."

The Times article and the U.N. report agree about the proliferation of home, or "kitchen," meth labs in Europe. According to the Times, 416 such labs were seized in the Czech Republic last year, compared with 19 in 2000.

Why so many small meth labs all of a sudden?

The Times sidles up to the question about two-thirds of the way through the piece by explaining that Czech authorities started putting a crimp on access to ephedrine, a methamphetamine precursor, from a local factory about five years ago. When meth chefs can't obtain ephedrine, some switch to pseudoephedrine, which they buy in bulk or harvest from over-the-counter cold medications. As the Times explains, the home meth cooker tends to make his meth from the pseudoephedrine found in OTC medicines. This tends to prevent home meth cookers from turning out huge lots of the stuff.