‘Methland’ goes beyond the myth
Lynn Bonney, Special to The Gazette
Friday, October 9, 2009
“Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town” by Nick Reding, Bloomsbury USA, 2009b $25.
By Lynn Bonney
Special to The Gazette
Olewein, Iowa, is a small town that has seen better days. Once a thriving farming community with manufacturing and meatpacking, Olewein has been forced to deal with closed businesses, scaled-back businesses and increasing unemployment.
Olewein is not so different from a multitude of towns across the middle part of the United States. Journalist Nick Reding recognized this when he chose Olewein as the focus for “Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town.”
Reding, who grew up in the St. Louis area, found himself aching to return to the Midwest. About the same time, he became aware, through newspaper reports, of the damage being done to communities by methamphetamine use and production. He had a hard time persuading editors that there was a story in the diminishment of the area national media like to call “the Heartland.” But he persisted and the result, “Methland,” is a story that manages to be both devastating and uplifting.
Reding transformed himself into a temporary Iowan, spending weeks at a time in an Olewein motel, while he got to know the meth cooks, the users, the cops and a town doctor. It’s a testimony to his reporting ability that he got so many of them to talk with him, to trust him with their stories.
One of Olewein’s biggest employers used to be a meat-processing plant that required heavy work and double shifts of many of its employees. The workers earned good wages and a doctor (on the company payroll) kept them going by prescribing methamphetamines. Over time, the plant was sold and then de-unionized, which meant pay cuts and the loss of benefits, including health insurance. When longtime employees were let go and replaced by foreign workers, many of them undocumented, wages fell even lower and some displaced workers went from using meth to cooking.
A “drug czar,” appointed by President George W. Bush, tried to take on the problem that beset Olewein and other communities. The Drug Enforcement Agency’s efforts to limit access to ephedrine and pseudoephedrine were limited by lobbyists for the powerful pharmaceutical industry and by large national retailers, resistant to tracking product sales.
Reding intersperses the Olewein story with historical information about meth.
“The most American drug,” as it’s been called, was created by a Japanese chemist in the late 19th century. It became something of a wonder drug, for its ability to sustain the stamina for all-American hard work. During World War II, the United States, like other countries, provided meth to soldiers to sustain morale and bolster the physical ability for battle. Until the 1970s, physicians routinely prescribed meth.
The drying-up of legal supplies, coupled with the farm crisis and a downturn in agribusiness, made the American Heartland a fertile ground for illegal meth. Olewein is not alone among communities that have faced the problem and tried hard to turn things around.
Reding goes beyond the myth that surfaces with every election, invoking small towns as untouched by big-city problems. The problems are there, he says, and the solutions may be harder in the small town than in the city. His exploration of “Methland” should be required reading for everyone who lives or works in a community that could be — and may be — not so different from Olewein, Iowa.
F Emporia Public Library staff and volunteers write “On the Shelf.”