Economy
Don't Live Next to a Meth Lab
Suburban and rural areas can hide facilities for methamphetamine production. When a clandestine lab gets busted, property values in the neighborhood take a hit.
The TV show “Breaking Bad” made suburban meth dens just as iconic as the urban corners that have become a cultural shorthand for drug dealing on television. As the adventures of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman showed us, methamphetamine can be more easily manufactured domestically compared to other street drugs.
Over the course of the series, partners White and Pinkman graduate from a suburban home with a school chemistry set to a mobile home in the middle of the New Mexico desert to a top-of-the-line meth manufacturing plant hidden inside a laundromat. But where are these kinds of facilities located in real life—and how do they affect the communities surrounding them?