'It just hasn't hit the media centers where generally something like that gets attention.' 'If (prevalent meth use) had been going on in Westchester County, New York, or Bethesda, Maryland, methamphetamine would have been a national priority 15 years ago,' said Rick Rawson, associate director of UCLA's integrated substance abuse programs. Slower still have been the filmmakers and writers of Los Angeles and New York. More than 5 percent of Americans aged 12 or older have used meth at least once, according to the 2006 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.Įxperts have argued that lawmakers have been slow to react. Methamphetamine was around for decades before a resurgence in the 1980s originated on the West Coast and swept across the country, taking firmest hold in poor rural areas. 'This was a while ago,' he says, 'before meth was fashionable.' And in last year's 'The Lookout,' Jeff Daniels' character blames the drug for his blindness. The little-seen 2001 film 'Cookers' turned a meth lab into a haunted house an upcoming episode of the IFC sketch show 'The Whitest Kids You Know' includes a parody song listing meth's ingredients. In January, the Drive-By Truckers released the song 'You and Your Crystal Meth,' a lamentation of a friend's addiction. The common thread to portrayals of meth is depravity _ it's the lowest of lows, an unnatural, creepy fusion of toxic chemistry and backcountry dirt roads.īefore 'Breaking Bad,' Val Kilmer played a meth addict in 2002's 'The Salton Sea.' One of the first noteworthy novels to tackle meth, Mark Lindquist's 'The King of Methlehem,' was published last summer. The meth milieu is houses turned into disheveled laboratories and left reeking of toxic fumes. Now, meth-related work is beginning to accumulate, with a trashy sensibility unique to the drug. There are many more, going all the way back to Billy Wilder's 'The Lost Weekend,' the 1945 film that chronicled alcoholism. Think of cocaine and you're likely to recall the 1980s TV series 'Miami Vice' or the 1991 film 'New Jack City.' Heroin has 'Trainspotting' (1996) or 'The Basketball Diaries' (1995). Such reticence is unusual for Hollywood, which has long been fascinated by drugs. His show is evidence of how methamphetamine, the most destructive drug in the country for more than a decade, has only recently begun to seep into pop culture.

Gilligan, creator and executive producer of the drama, said meth 'seemed like somewhat untilled ground' in TV and movies. The result is the new AMC series 'Breaking Bad,' where Gilligan's chemistry teacher protagonist, broke and dying of lung cancer, decides to leave his family financially secure by cooking and dealing meth. So he turned to the ugliest thing he could think of: methamphetamine. Vince Gilligan needed a character who would do something truly despicable.

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