The Methamphetamine Epidemic

Methamphetamine became one of the most widespread and damaging drug crises of its time. What began decades earlier in smaller, localized groups eventually expanded into a national problem, affecting individuals, families, and entire communities. Its rapid spread was driven not only by demand, but by how accessible key ingredients commonly found in cold medications (e.g., ephedrine and pseudoephedrine) were for illegal production.

This FRONTLINE documentary examines how methamphetamine use spiraled during that period, tracing its rise from early distribution networks to large-scale trafficking and domestic lab production. It also explores the tension between regulating these chemical ingredients and maintaining access to legitimate medicine, highlighting how gaps in control allowed the problem to grow. Through this, the film captures a critical moment in the evolution of the meth epidemic and the challenges faced in trying to contain it.

“It’s huge. It affects not merely the users but it’s the leading cause of property crime. It’s the leading reason why children are removed from their homes and sent into foster care. It’s very hard to go to any part of Oregon and not experience the effects of methamphetamine on ordinary people.”

“In terms of dopamine release, the mother of them all is methamphetamine. You get an increase from this base level to about 1,250 units. It produces a tremendous release of dopamine. The brain isn’t designed to produce this kind of a release. This really doesn’t occur from any normally occurring rewarding activity. That’s one of the reasons why people, when they take methamphetamine, they report having this euphoric experience that’s unlike anything they’ve ever experienced.”

“What researchers have discovered is that meth creates its rush of euphoria by altering the part of an addict’s brain that generates dopamine. They experience it as an inability to experience pleasure. Everything feels kind of gray and hopeless, and nothing feels good. And so, in their mind, the only way to feel better is to take more methamphetamine. And hence you have relapse and people going back to using.”

“Methamphetamine, unlike most other hard drugs out there, is uniquely susceptible to supply side intervention because it’s not something you can grow. It’s not something you get out of poppy fields or out of coca plants. It’s something you gotta cook up in a factory, you gotta make this stuff.”

"While the U.S. government was spending billions trying to control heroin and cocaine, meth was such a low priority that no one was bothering to monitor who was shopping at the nine factories that make the key ingredients in meth."

“During one 18-month period in the early 1990s, the Amezcua brothers purchased 170 tons of ephedrine from the nine factories and shipped it into the United States, where it was turned into two billion hits of meth. The meth on America’s streets was suddenly cheap, plentiful, and most important, remarkably pure. And soon the addiction rate skyrocketed, creating the first great spike of American meth abuse.”

“When the purity of the meth on the street falls, not only do fewer first-time users become addicted, but those who are addicted find it easier to get clean. And that gives places like On Track and its director, Rita Sullivan, a chance.” NOTE: Rita Sullivan was fired following an investigation. The suit alleged that Jeremy Braun intimidated and coerced his patient to have sex with him during a drug counselling session and that Rita Sullivan, as OnTrack’s founder and director, knew about this sexual abuse and prior incidents of sexual abuse of OnTrack clients by Jeremy Braun.