Methland The Death And Life Of An American Small Town post 4

A central myth of our national culture is small-town residents, the story goes, are honest, hard-working, religiously observant and somehow just more American than the rest of America . . . Reding reveals the fallacies of this myth by showing how, over the past three decades, small-town America has been blighted by methamphetamine, which has taken root in--and taken hold of--its soul. Oelwein serves as a case study of the problems many small towns face today. Once a vibrant farming community where union work and small businesses were plentiful, Oelwein is now struggling through a transition to agribusiness and low-wage employment or, alternatively, unemployment. These conditions, Reding shows, have made the town susceptible to methamphetamine. He tracks the decline and, ultimately, the limited resurgence of Oelwein, while also examining the larger forces that have contributed to its problems. He links meth to the gathering power of unregulated capitalism beginning in the 1980's. It was then, he argues, that one-time union employees earning good wages and protected by solid benefits and begans to see their earnings cut and their benefits disappear. Undocumented migrants began taking jobs at extraordinarily low wages, thereby depressing the cost of labor. Meth, with its opportunity for quick profit and its power to make the most abject and despondent person feel suddenly alive and vibrant, found fertile ground. Meanwhile, in Washington, pharmaceutical lobbyists were working hard to keep DEA agents from attempting to limit access to the raw ingredients; ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, meth's core precursors, were simply too vital to the lucrative allergy-remedy market.  Reding positions the meth epidemic as the triumph of profits over the safety and prosperity of America's small-town inhabitants. But meth hasn't always been seen as a menace. In fact, Reding explains, 'methamphetamine was once heralded as the drug that would end the need for all others. He believed that this drug could replace all other drugs which meant a dangerous society.