welcome to fort collins

this is the town where i live:

'Three men have been arrested and another is being investigated for what authorities say is their involvement in a meth lab operation uncovered Wednesday morning by the Northern Colorado Drug Task Force at an apartment complex in south Fort Collins.'

I was writing yesterday and wondering why there was a helicopter circling past every few minutes. Turns out there was a meth lab raid a couple miles away. Awesome.

There's a really cool book about meth that i just started but which looks really promising called 'Methland,' by a guy named Nick Reding. I heard an interview with him on NPR last week and ordered the book immediately. He not only talks about the tragedy of the dream of middle america going down the meth toilet, he points out that most reporting on meth misses the real issue.



While we'll talk about the 'scourge of drugs' and the danger to children, and the chemical contamination, Reding points out that meth is essentially an economic phenomenon: without the collapse of industry and manufacturing in middle america, and the subsequent collapse of wages, there would be no explosion of meth use and manufacture. Our economic policies created this monster, the same policies that enrich the wealthy and strip the poor and middle class of any semblance of power over their own lives.

One thing Reding can't explain is why meth guys think a neck tattoo is a) a good idea, or b) not a dead giveaway. Might as well tattoo 'I'm a meth dealer!' across your face.