American Meth

This documentary is pretty bad . It does not appear to have a point other than to get a cop, a counselor, politicians some junkies on tape. The more f-ed up the junkies and the more abusive they are to the poor children they have the better . did anyone on the crew ever think of calling child services , or getting these people into rehab or something ? hell no , they were white trash gold ! i do see the merit of an attempt to show how this stuff affect families , but allowing these people to continue living like animals than people of the 21st century , all this while letting their naked children eat garbage and play outside in winter without shirts or pants, tends to turn this already shaky and irrelevant piece of documentary filmmaking into a sort of shock film that is useless to anyone except those who have a hard on for tragedy . i'm in no way saying that a filmmaker should narc on his subjects , but i do see the perversity of pointing out what is basically child abuse , while sitting in that house and drinking your latte.

2 out of 10 because it could have been much better but not much worse

The first thing that stood out was the credit "A Justin Hunt Project".

... Oh really, now.

Well maybe that other commenter was correct, and this -is- a school "project". A really bad one.

Basically it's yet another misinformed drug documentary that doesn't really say anything new. Meth is bad. No, really?

Lots of typos, and bad information, and restating the same thing over and over and over again: -The before and after pictures. -The shocking testimony of the addicts and the LEOs. -The awful chemicals used in production.

The latter always kind of amuses me. Chemistry isn't pretty. The components used for production aren't consumed, ffs! Chemistry is reaction and extraction. It's not like baking a cake Do people really think that Prilosec is made with flour and brown sugar?

I enjoyed watching this documentary! I am writing an article about methamphetamine and found the information it provides very useful in illustrating how much of an impact the methamphetamine epidemic has had all over the United States. The statistics and statements presented do paint an accurate picture of the drug's use and its wide ranging devastation... in the 1990s and early 2000s. I would urge the production crew to provide an updated sequel, perhaps with follow up interviews of subjects they talked to in the first movie. There are significant changes in the way the methamphetamine addiction is handled by our criminal justice and child welfare systems, and in the formulary of methamphetamine and amphetamine available in our country. Another great source of information about this topic is a book called Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town by Nick Reding. The book follows several addicts and shares the details of their lives, and also provides a detailed account of the societal and political events that fueled the flames and failed to prevent the epidemic.

Please consider an update on James and holly and the family. I noticed others wanting an update too. The family's life caught perfectly the single wide trailer life of poverty and meth mixed in. The camerapersons way of showing the kids life and the good and bad was so fair and not biased. Learning about the faces of death project and how that was unfunded was important to discuss also. Watching the dealers and neighbors literally heckle them as they try to better their lives shows how disgusting methlife community is. It is a falsehood how druggie think these people care about them. It's always about money. An update on James and holly and their boys would make a great addition or part 2 of this family. 18 years is long enough. The children are adults now.

The problem with this documentary is it shows things from the POV of a cop on his beat rather than a sociological wide view of the issue. The conclusions it makes are due to this narrow scope. The fact is if law enforcement decriminalized this disease, all profit motive woukd be taken away from all the pushers in Mexico looking to expand their drug and crime related enterprises. You realky have to wonder where the line between law enforcement and criminality exists, if it does at all. If the law enforcement managers and top officers had the best interests of a community at heart, they would decriminalize this as well as the more profitable drug, cocaine. I understand why dumb beat cops will never see it this way, their perspective is to close to the problem at hand. However, when the ivy league educated managers of the law enforcement system continue the prohibition of illegal substances, with the knowledge of what prohibitions means for the black market businesses across the border, you have to wonder if at least these officers are making decisions to benefit their industry and employees over the interests of the innocent community members they police, if not out right collusion with black market business and their many employees both in Mexico and across the border. You really have to wonder who the police are for, themselves or the communities they happen to police. Increasingly, e police force is becoming more and more separate from the locality it serves, with specialized pros being bused in from other regions. It seems that the national police force is taking cues from China and other despotic countries, which find it easy to coerce police into oppressing citizens due to the targeted recruitment rural bumpkins to police urban areas like Beijing or city dweller to police rural areas. The way Tianemien Square worked was because the army used to quash the democratic urban dwellers was composed of uneducated rural farm boys who had no literacy let alone a college degree, As long as we the tax payers stay out of our community police forces' business, they will continue to increasing detach themselves and eventually become more similar to an hired security force rather than an integral part of a communities health and well being- which is what they used to be-remember being a police officer used to he something that. Was respected!!!