Methland

The economy of non-rural America is susceptible to depression, erratic market shifts, and general uncertainty, but it is rarely as tenuous as the economic stability of the small-town United States.

When the meatpacking plant in Oelwein suffered after the buyout, so did Oelwein’s economy. People who had depended on the plant for their living suddenly had no alternative in a small town with so few employment options. Farmers dealt with a variation of the same issue during lean years when their crops produced lower than expected yields.

These economic shifts made it possible for Oelwein’s residents to turn to meth manufacturing. Reding writes, “No legal industry could, like meth, claim 1,000 percent increases in production and sales in the four years between 1998 and 2002” (28). Nathan claims that “farming and agriculture were vying with a drug to be Oelwein’s lifeblood” (28).

When legitimate businesses leave Oelwein, meth’s presence grows. When there are more addicts, the town grows less safe and becomes less attractive to new, prospective businesses searching for places to relocate. For Murphy, anything other than a sudden boost of revenue ensures that Oelwein cannot get ahead. An economy cannot support new treatment centers if it has inadequate sewer systems and flickering streetlights.

Oelwein’s economic woes are mirrored in rural areas across the country. According to U.S. Department of Commerce, metropolitan areas enjoyed 99 percent of the job and population between 2008 and 2017, despite comprising only 36 percent of the nation’s counties. (Swenson, David. “Dwindling population and disappearing jobs is the fate that awaits much of rural America.” Marketwatch. 24 May 2019. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/much-of-rural-america-is-fated-to-just-keep-dwindling-2019-05-07.)

When Reding meets Major and Buck, he introduces the theme of how future generations will be impacted by the meth use of their parents. Major lives in terror that Buck will be damaged in ways that he can’t see yet. At the time of the book’s writing, there were no expansive, rigorous studies on the long-term effects of meth on children whose parents were heavy users during pregnancy and their early years after birth.

During the section where Reding introduces Jamie and her work, he reveals that three of the Jarvis men—including Roland—were in jail in 2005 for drug-related offenses. With the family’s primary breadwinners incarcerated—some for sentences of over five years—the outlook for the family outside the penal system is bleak.

Meth creates people who cannot thrive or enjoy their lives when they are sober. People whose brains and dopamine systems lose the ability to reward them for making good choices will be less likely to responsibly raise children in ways that will help them make their own good choices.