The Importance Of Small Towns In Nick Reding's Methland

In Methland, Nick Reding vindicates that small towns in the United States are not what they seem to be. He suggests many people throughout the nation see small towns as quaint little towns with diligent people living and working in them. As Reding articulates throughout the book that this idea of quiet, hard-working small towns is all just ignorance and imagination, especially for towns like Oelwein, Iowa. This town when you first examine it seems to have a nasty meth problem that seems almost incurable due to the lack of federal funding from the government and state. However, Reding unearths substantial problems alongside a drug epidemic that has almost turned Oelwein into a ghost town. Oelwein at one time was a lively town that was full …show more content…
Immigrants that ended up working in Oelwein would work for extremely low wages that most citizens would not even consider working for, which caused for them to take most of the jobs, leaving the citizens of Oelwein unemployed or pushed them towards producing meth to make a living. Manufacturing meth was an easy way to make money because it allowed people the feeling of euphoria, it kept individuals up all day and night, and it was highly addictive so it kept them coming back for more. Reding, thus goes into detail about possible legislation that might be passed in Washington D.C. that was trying to restrict access to ingredients that are used in meth like pseudoephedrine. Something I picked up on in the book that Reding did not explicitly say is that that profits off of selling those ingredients that are used in methamphetamine seemed more important than the health and well-being of citizens across the …show more content…
Nobody was really helping the drug addicts or dealers turn around their lives. They would go right back to their same habits after getting a slap on the wrist. These people in the book and around my area are addicted to something that is almost impossible to quit on their own. That aspect is not only heartbreaking but it gets worse because there is few to nobody there helping them and encouraging them to stop their addiction. After reading Methland, it opened my eyes to the problems in my town and across the nation. I knew these things were happening in my hometown but I just shrugged them off because it wasn’t happening to me or any of my family.
However, reading this book gives you a perspective to where you feel bad for these people because there are so little resources to help them straighten out their lives. While reading this book it made me go reevaluate how I saw drug addicts and drug abuse in general. I used to be disgusted with drug addicts because I saw everything as their own fault because they started using and abusing drugs. Now, I am trying not to be as ignorant and be more empathetic because yes they started this habit but even if they wanted to stop there are not adequate resources (in my hometown at least) to help them quit their