Meth and cocaine are both classified as stimulants. They both increase your heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration. They both give the user the feeling of well being and euphoria. The two drugs share some characteristics, but there are some major differences too. Cocaine starts out as a plant, a plant that only grows well in a particular climate. This means that just anybody, anywhere in the world can't decide they want part of the coke market and begin producing and selling coke. The Colombians have had this market cornered and enjoyed a very profitable decade in the 80s. Meth is a synthetic drug, so with the right man made chemicals, it can be produced about anywhere.
In the 1980's cocaine was everywhere. Rich white moms in the suburbs were snorting lines while doing housework, young black moms was hitting a crack pipe in an alley behind a housing project, and a poor white guy was dissolving his in a spoon to administer it using a hypodermic needle. It was being sold from homes in the suburbs and street corners in the ghettos of every city. It all started as a plant, grown in another part of the world. It passed through several hands before reaching that pipe or syringe. Everyone that had anything to do with it up to this point made an incredible amount of money for the risk they took in delivering it. The high that cocaine gives a person is very intense and very short. You feel really good, but only for half an hour or so, then you are wanting to feel really good again. This is a good thing for the guys selling it, not so good for the user or his neighbor that has anything of value that is not chained down or locked up. Meth will give a person the same great feeling but you will not need more in half an hour, you will be good to go for up to 8 hours. It sells for the same amount of money for the same quantity, but last much longer.
Another big difference is that the ingredients needed to make meth are all available at the store just down the street. Nothing needed from a foreign country, its all available locally. Or at least it was back in the 80's. You could get on the internet go to The Hive, a very popular website that had thousands of people on it daily discussing the best ways to manufacture meth, to find out what ingredients and equipment needed to make your own dope. Then just go to Ebay and order everything that you need and have it delivered right to your door, or a friend's door, or your neighbor's door. Now you know why cocaine use declined and meth use skyrocketed. Now meth labs were being discovered everywhere. The procedure to make meth is simple, the ingredients are cheap and easy to get, meth is very addictive. Can you see the possible problem here?
The Drug Enforcement Agency would try to control production by regulating a chemical that is needed to manufacture meth. It wouldn't take more than a couple of days and someone at The Hive would come up with a replacement chemical, or a way around the DEA's roadblock. They would post the solution on the web site and it was back to cooking. This went on for years, one chemical would become regulated or watched and another would take its place. Finally the DEA made it next to impossible to get pseudo-ephedrine, the ingredient found in cold pills. There was no substitute or work around for this. The days of cheap American made meth were over. That doesn't mean that all the people that had been doing very large quantities of very high quality dope for many years now were ready to just quit and give up.
Did someone say they needed some meth? Groups in Mexico have been smuggling weed, heroin, and Colombian cocaine into the US for decades. They have established routes and procedures in place. Bribes have been made and product has been flowing across the border smoothly. If the demand for coke has dropped off but the demand for meth has increased, being the business savvy bunch that they are, the cartels adjust their distribution inventory. The meth can be produced in Mexico, transported, distributed, and sold by the same group that manufactured it. No more overhead, no middlemen, no sharing the profits with anyone. This is a first, the cartels have never controlled the product from creation to end user before. They either bought it wholesale then resold it wholesale, making only marginal profits, or they grew it, harvested it, then sold it wholesale. This had a higher profit margin but they would have a substantial amount of time involved because of the time needed to grow. The ingredients needed to manufacture meth are cheap, the process is not very time consuming, and every aspect of the business can be controlled by one group. The cartels are making money faster than ever before, and will do anything to make sure these profits are maintained or increased.
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