Methland 2

The last reading I did in Methland was rather uneventful. I was introduced to Major, a former meth junkie and member of the biker gang, the Sons of Silence. Major was living with his parents when Reding met him. He had just gotten clean from a long history of meth use. He was living with his 2 year-old son, Buck. Buck was a meth baby. Reding hasn't looked at how meth affects children. Reding did mention earlier in the book that "at least 7,000 kids were living every day in homes that produce five pounds of toxic wast, which is often just thrown in the kitchen trash, for each pound of unusable methamphetamine." (30). One would think that kids would be taken away. One would think that kids would know that their home isn't safe. But unfortunately, kids don't.

When Major lived with the mother of his children, he would microwave coffee filters that he used to strain meth's impurities. The heated paper would then give him a good deal of powdered meth. The microwave became coated in the powdered meth and then used to cook Buck's food. Buck had to have consumed ungodly amounts of homemade crank. It is disgusting to think a parent would give their kid meth.

Reding tells about the physical difficulties of trying to quit meth. While in jail, Major said that one guy became convinced that he had the ingredients to make meth in his body. He thought that his vein was a lithium strip and sat for hours uprooting the vein with his fingernails. Meth also causes users to become paranoid.

Reding says "This, really, is the genius of the meth business. Cocaine and heroin are linked to illegal crops--coca and poppied, respectively. Meth on the other hand is linked in a one-to-one ratio with fighting the common cold." (114).  The DEA was trying to monitor the importation of ephedrine, the main ingredient in both meth and Sudafed (or other cold medicines). The DEA had finally gotten to the point to where all the cold medicine companies weren't using ephedrine anymore, but they were using pseudoephedrine or pseudo, for short. Pseudoephedrine is the "mirror image" of ephedrine. The DEA had succeeded in stopping illegal meth production using ephedrine, but now cooks were making meth using pseudo and it was even stronger than the earlier meth. Why does crime have such aggressive loopholes? I don't know. I find it ironic how the government outlawed one ingredient and it only benefitted the criminals. The pharmaceutical companies would push against the governments monitoring. Therefore, the small town cooks, like Roland Jarvis, would be protected by the big pharmaceutical companies. It's a perfect scheme.