Methland

Title: Methland
Author: Nick Reding
Pub Date: 2009
Genre: Nonfiction
Nutshell: The effects of crystal meth on one small town in Iowa and on the US as a whole.

This is the rare piece of factual reporting that is so easy and quick to read that it doesn't feel like it's factual or reporting. For the subject, it isn't dry or particularly tragic or preachy. Reding manages not to demonize anyone or make anyone into a helpless victim or a villain. Meth changes people, and he just eloquently charts those changes.

Most of the stories take place in tiny Oelwein, Iowa, a place few of us could find on a map but which serves as an excellent microcosm for middle America as a whole. Once a prosperous farm and railroad town, the local meat packing plant eventually got taken over and started offering substandard wages before finally shutting down entirely, putting the majority of the town out of work and into meth. Meth is, as Reding puts it, a quintessentially American drug. It helps you work harder for longer. It's seen as a route to success. And with our Puritan work ethics and appetites for having the finer things, we are easy pickings for addiction.

Reding charts the move from homegrown "batchers" who make their own product in their kitchens, often blowing up their own houses in the process, to the more sinister encroachment of the Mexican cartels, who have no real organizational structure and are much more dangerous than the more familiar specters of the South American drug smugglers from several decades ago. We are left with the very real threat of the Mexican VTOs teaming up with terrorist organizations, each getting funding from the highly lucrative meth trade. It's a sobering thought.

Overall, this was a fascinating read. It covers so many topics, from the drug trade to the changes of small town life to the problems of policing in the 21st century. And Reding does it all with a light hand, never getting bogged down. He obviously comes to care about all his subjects, meth user or law officer or doctor or whoever. Everyone is a human and deserving of their own story. It's a remarkable book.