The Most American Drug

Abstract

This chapter begins with scenes from Matthew Heineman's Oscar-nominated documentary Cartel Land, which shows a crew of Mexican methamphetamine cooks standing around a few steaming plastics barrels. It investigates how methamphetamine was the scourge drug of twenty-first century middle America until opioid addiction grew into a full-fledged crisis. It also recounts how methamphetamine was widely prescribed and misused across America under brand names like Methedrine and Norodin well into the 1980s. The chapter discusses how illicit meth had remained popular with underground lab cooks and users since the days when it flowed through the counterculture of postwar New York and San Francisco.