The meth problem in small-town America

I read two books on the topic of methamphetamine in the past few weeks.  The first was the fictional Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell.  (The movie Winter's Bone won Best Picture & Best Screenplay at Sundance.) Throughout a long bitter winter in the Ozarks, Ree Dolly, a teenage high school dropout, cares for her two younger brothers and mentally unstable mother amid a town of kin who are all involved with meth, both in business and personally.  Strange characters drift through the story such as Ree's Uncle Teardrop, her newly married best friend, Gail, and distant female relations who physically attack Ree. All the while Ree is tracking her missing father whose life revolves around meth.  I found the characters poverty stricken, hopeless, and hopelessly addicted to a lifestyle on a downward spiral.  I wondered if there were small towns in America that were actually models for the story.

It turns out the next book I picked up enlightened me to small towns in America's heartland where meth has taken hold of the people, the economy, and is causing a way of life to vanish.  Methland: the death and life of a small American town focuses on Oelwein, Iowa.  Once home to a meat-packing plant that employed over 2000 residents at good wages, when the author visited first in 2005, he found Oelwein to be suffering from a decrease in family farms, high unemployment due to the closing of factories, and these factors effecting the atmosphere & economy of the whole town.  Nick Reding, the author, visited Oelwein and other Midwest towns which had become victims of meth.  Meth production went from small labs in rural settings to superlabs controlled by the international drug trafficking organizations back to small labs.  Oelwein has turned its reputation around by fundraising to make needed town improvements and attracting good paying jobs back to the newly renovated industrial park and the once abandoned meat production plant.  This book was a wake-up call to a problem which could become worse; the worse the economic outlook for the US seems.  This book touched on the political and social consequences of one of America's most popular and readily accessible narcotic.  Be sure to read both the epilogue and afterword which hypothesizes on the future of Oelwein and meth in the US.  Check the webpage for Methland and see notable awards this book has been given and read further reviews on the impact of this work. 
I highly recommend both works (along with Burning Bright by Ron Rash) for a comprehensive introduction to this current topic.