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How the "New Meth" took over North America's streets

The Big Story

About this episode

Meth has always been a dangerous drug — but never this dangerous, users and social workers across the continent tell Sam Quinones in his new book. A new production method has made the drug easier to and cheaper to make, allowing it to spread from the Mexican border all the way up to Canada, with devastating effects. Amid the opioid and fentanyl crises, the impact of new meth can be lost among the overdoses, but this drug seems to attack users' minds in a way it hasn't before.

How did meth spread so fast and so far? What's different about the meth on the streets today? What is it doing to users, and what is being done to help them? And why can't researchers dig into what's happening in users' brains?

GUEST: Sam Quinones, author of The Least Of Us:  True Tales  of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth

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How the "New Meth" took over North America's streets

The Big Story

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