“At first we gave it away. Then the addicts will do anything to get more.” That’s how the crank business works. Nick Reding spent four long years researching this book about methamphetamine labs in small rural towns. Reding picks Oelwein, Iowa for his case study. The Mayor, the Police Chief, the meth addicts all tell Reding their stories. As family farms fail, as rural life reached new economic lows, making money from brewing home-made methamphetamine gains a certain logic. Reding tracks the growth of druggie entrepreneurship despite the DEA and fumbling Federal legislation. Any who thinks this addiction issue is just going to go way is kidding themselves. This is an eye-opening book on the growing meth problem. The book’s only fault is the lack of an index. GRADE: B+
Before the advent of crack, it seemed like the drug problem might subside to a smaller population. But once it became possible for people with a high school chemistry book to make drugs, things accelerated. A lot of the buyers are self-medicating, I think. Maybe we have to deal with that first.
There’s a horrific scene in METHLAND where one of the crank brewers has a paranoid delusion and burns his own house down, Patti. In the process, he manages to liquify a large portion of his skin. Scary stuff. But a powerful book.