Spencer Pratt said ‘super meth’ is helping fuel LA’s homelessness problem. What is that?

During a recent debate, Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt pointed out that drug abuse is being overlooked as a factor when trying to solve the city’s homelessness problem.

Although both of his opponents on stage, Mayor Karen Bass and Council Member Nithya Raman, praised the progress in solving the problem of street homelessness, Pratt said that neither of them is fixing the root of the issue, which he believes is drug addiction.

“The truth is that no matter how many beds you give to these people, they will be on super meth, they will be on fentanyl,” he said during a forum on Wednesday.

Although the link between drug use and homelessness has long been noted, the term “super meth” may have raised eyebrows. However, experts say that it is not only true, but has become more common in recent years.

What is mixed in, however, is whether the phenomenon is neglected or prevalent in Los Angeles.

What is ‘super meth’?

Methamphetamine is a stimulant that increases a person’s heart rate, breathing and body temperature when used, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration. High doses can cause convulsions, cardiovascular collapse, stroke or death.

“Super meth” is P2P meth, short for phenyl-2-propanone methamphetamine.

Meth is traditionally made from ephedrine and pseudoephedrine — substances that can be found in over-the-counter cold medications that treat nasal congestion and runny noses, said Terry Church, director of the Institute for Addiction Sciences Education Committee at USC.

This possibility of abuse is why such drugs can only be bought by adults, and only in limited quantities.

What researchers found in the most recent batches of meth, which began around 2021, is that ephedrine and pseudoephedrine were converted to phenyl-2-propanone, Church said.

With this new ingredient, “super meth” became cheaper and easier to produce – so it began to be produced in large quantities.

“Unfortunately, it’s highly addictive because it’s about 97% pure methamphetamine, whereas the old model was about 75% to 80%,” he said.

That means the high users experience can last up to 24 hours, about twice as long as that produced by ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, Church said.

The side effects of super meth are the same as regular meth.

“There’s a lot of brain damage, liver damage and heart damage that happen because it’s so strong,” she said. “People who end up being addicted and use for a long time, end up using more.”

Does LA have a ‘super meth’ problem?

By 2021, methamphetamine accounted for nearly three-quarters of drug seizures in the Los Angeles High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, according to the latest data from the public health department.

The number of reported doses of methamphetamine seized increased steadily from 2011 to 2020, then peaked in 2021.

While that data does not specify the prevalence of super meth, LA County Department of Public Health officials said they “do not see a significant amount of phenyl-2-propanone methamphetamine in the drug supply with available drug testing data.”

“We can show that this is not a common form of methamphetamine here in Los Angeles,” public health officials wrote in an email to The Times.

Church said the data may not be complete because it can be difficult to distinguish super meth from regular methamphetamine when it is metabolized.

“We can trace some of it if [a person has] they made phenyl-2-propanone two hours ago,” he said. [it’s] it is not easy to trace because they have produced it and it is starting to change chemically.”

The majority of methamphetamine seizures in the United States occur at or near the southern border, especially in the southwest, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment.

What was seized and tested “reached the highest purity and strength ever recorded, with purity levels reaching nearly 97% by 2025,” according to the report.

Church added that there may be more cases of super meth than health officials can track because the drug comes from labs in Mexico.

“One set of data you’ll want to look at is DEA border seizure statistics,” Church said. “And obviously, what the DEA finds is only a small part of what makes it pass.”