Breaking Bad is wrong: most American meth incidents are in the Midwest of the U.S., not the Southwest.

Ashley Lutz explains where the crystal meth incidents occur in America:

The meth epidemic is rampant in the United States.

The Drug Enforcement Administration put out a map showing the number of meth lab "incidents" in each state. The map shows "all meth incidents, including labs, 'dumpsites' or 'chemical and glassware' seizures," according to the DEA.

This map by the Drug Enforcement Agency shows how many of the incidents are concentrated in the Midwest. 

The top three states for accidents are Missouri, Tennessee, and Indiana. 

I had no idea. This is a Middle America problem.

I understand that, among other things, you really should have a LOT OF ROOM to cook meth effectively.  It's not the kind of thing you want to do in a studio apartment.

Oh and also the cooking location is not necessarily the same as the consuming location.  I understand that Oregon has a huge meth problem for instance, but it has few cooking arrests.

The victims:

The house is about 200 feet from Smith Elementary School, which is also on Chester Avenue. An 8-year-old boy who lives in the home attends the school.

"The principal came and got us and said 'We have a child who lives in that house in our office, do you want him?'" Simcox said. The child was placed in the care of children's services.

“Extremely frustrating. We work really hard because of the children. And to think children walk by this every single, solitary day is very frustrating,” Simcox said.

The  Akron Clandestine Lab Enforcement Team has broken up around 170 meth labs this year alone, which is around 100 more than previous years.

Read more: http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/news/local_news/oh_summit/eight-arrest-one-child-removed-after-meth-found-in-house-near-akron-elementary-school#ixzz2NO8WUIGH

Draw a circle around Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

That's the manufacturing center, which happens to be in the center of the U.S.

From the middle, it gets distributed everywhere, as Joyce pointed out.

This is central to the theme of Breaking Bad, too: Meth is fundamentally an American problem.

Would you also describe those areas as economically depressed?  Former mining and manufacturing?   Middle America is the market.

Narcotic News reports that meth is coming in from Mexico.  Just as Breaking Bad describes it.

http://www.narcoticnews.com/Meth-Prices-in-the-United-States-of-America.php

Prices for Methamphetamine vary across the United States. This section is for wholesale meth prices and the standard for this section is a pound of methamphetamine.  The majority of methamphetamine that is available is coming from meth labs in Mexico. Mexican meth is becoming more available in comparison to domestically manufactured meth.  Less and less meth is being manufactured in the USA because of restrictions on the ingredients that are needed to make meth, most notably restrictions on pseudoephedrine.

Yes, and that explains Michigan, Oklahoma, Virginia, and the Carolina's, too.

Florida is a mystery to me.

Florida defies logic.  I added new stuff above.  You *must* open the link.

The link is worth repeating:

http://www.narcoticnews.com/Meth-Prices-in-the-United-States-of-America.php

The economics of meth are too damn good.

America finally found a new industry we can excel at manufacturing and distribution with.

The only problem is, it's killing us.

Economic growth as being proportional to meth production made initial sense to me too.  Space, time, demand, financial need...random: is there a relationship to agriculture or corn (industries, whether inverse or causal)?  what's the word for something that arises to compensate for lack of something else - compensatory?also, this reminds me of the anti-meth campaign of 2011-12 in San Francisco.  I have a feeling the production incidents in Cali are more inland.

Compensatory, yes.

Nature abhors a vacuum.

the real common denominator in all of these places with high numbers is the amount of rural land available for rent or cheap purchase. i live in va.  some of the biggest meth operations on the east coast weren't too far from where i lived on farms that were being rented out, had huge out buildings already constructed and a power consumption history that wouldn't spark regulators to take a look at what was going on when the new "tenants" moved in and set up their "agribusiness".   if there were a street/satellite view of this map i bet you would also see a correlation between these rural farms and large secondary arteries that connect quickly to major E/W or N/S roads into high density regions (DC, NY, NJ, FL in our case).

Very insightful, Christine; however, places like Mississippi, New Mexico, and Montana would be big.

So centralization for distribution has gotta be a part of it too.

yup! those secondary roads are critical if they link to (or parallel) major arteries .  everyone of the take downs in our region started with a power spike, fwiw.  funny, you think these guys would go solar to offset  ;O)

Yeah, this would be a place for green energy--and an upsurge of cash-based dentistry. 

LOL! Dawn! i used to do work with the DEA... one of the things that blew my mind was how efficient drug manufacturers are.  they take lean and agile and innovation to a whole new level...so, while i kind of joke about the solar piece, i am actually a bit surprised they haven't done this given that the grid is usually the first place law enforcement gets tipped off.

So, maybe I should have these guys write up an entrepreneurship curriculum...guest speak to my seniors? If Eric Ries is busy, I can get one of these guys on standby...

LOL! seriously, tho.  it is MIND BLOWING what they are capable of.  i don't think there is a legal industry that can compare.  we saw guys who pivoted their entire model in 24 hours after a border bust and increased their distribution as a result.  amazing business case study with devastating social impacts.

This is only slightly related, and I agree this is bad, but you know what really annoys me--the fact I can't buy basic decongestants without being molested by federal authorities' paperwork. Because I might manufacture meth.  As if another fifty sets of laws will stop the trafficking. It will always run up the 1-95 corridor, whether I am legally permitted to treat a cold or not...  

omg.. don't get me started... it's ridiculous and ineffective.

"Excuse me Agent Smith, I really do have a cold. Let me sneeze on you. You can take the germs to Quantico and analyze them. THEN can I have some Sudafed?" One time, I was dually unlucky. Husband had a cold and I had allergies. Two different scripts. "Ah, no, you can't do THAT?" Why, you afraid I'm going to OD on red dye? I'm sneezing. "No...there are laws about that." "About getting sick? Show me the statute..." 

We determined that i might not, in fact, be sick. I might be manufacturing drugs. So I couldn't get two types of pseudoeffedrine at a time. I was sick. And annoyed. And ready to play hardball. 

"Oh, that's ok. I have some expired prescriptions at home. I'll take a stab at guessing which one would be best for my husband." 

Translate: Unhealthy. Illegal transfer of rx... that lady sold me the proper stuff pretty quick. Albeit not the value pack, so I paid a million dollars more... 

you rock. and i know how you feel. i wanted to buy two boxes at a time because i didn't want to have to make a trip back to the store and we had a whole household that was down. got D.E.N.I.E.D and was pissed when i ended up paying $60 in co-pays to docs because that cold festered and turned to strep in my kids...

I'd have gone down the street to another store like I was going to drug dealers, but that's not the point... And I'm not even a political extremist.