1 Hardware 2 2-liter bottles (Clean & dry, with lid) 1 1-liter bottle (Clean & dry, with lid) 1 20oz bottle (Clean & dry, with lid) Approx 18" aquarium tubing Needle-nosed pliers Small pipecutter (Or snips) Measuring cups (1/3 and 1 cup size) Funnel Small tupperware container with lid Baggies Utility knife or razorblade Coffee filters Ingredients 1. 1/3 cup Ammonium Nitrate (Get by cutting open cold packs. It's the little white balls. Be careful what you buy, some cold packs are ammonium nitrate-free. Other materials can be used, but we're going to do it this way.) 2. 1/2 cup 100% Lye (aka Sodium Hydroxide. Available at hardware stores in the drain cleaner section. - Drano Crystals, or any other powdered lye works) 3. 3 cups Coleman Camp Fuel (Engine starting fluid [diethyl ether], or VM&P naphtha can also be used) 4. 3x Lithium strips (Get by cutting open Energizer AA Lithium batteries - This YOUTUBE tutorial video shows EXACTLY how to get your Lithium strips) YouTube - Get Lithium Metal From an Energizer Battery 5. 100ml NP solvent of your choice (Xylene or MEK is recommended - easily found at your local hardware store in the paint section) 6. 3-4 boxes 120mg 12-hour pseudoephedrine HCl (PSE). The highest count you can find. (Sudafed or a generic equivalent. MAKE SURE PSE IS THE ONLY ACTIVE INGREDIENT.) 7. about 1/3 cup iodized salt 8. 4 capfuls sulfuric acid (Available as liquid drain cleaner.) OR muriatic acid (Also sold at hardware stores) 9. Denatured alcohol or Isopropyl alcohol 10. 1/8 cup of distilled water (Poland Spring or any bottled water can also be used) Initial Preparations 1. Take the 20oz lid and cut a hole in it big enough to fit the aquarium tubing. It should be snug. 2. Cut one of the 2-liters in half. Discard the top.
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3. Crush the pills into a fine powder. Use a coffee grinder, blender, or if worse comes to worse, hand crush them with a pair of pliers or something. Put the powder into a baggie. The beauty of "shake n bake" is you don't have to clean your pills to extract PSE. Just crush and toss in! 4. Measure out and crush the ammonium nitrate (optional). If it is dry enough, go ahead and crush it. Not important that you do this, though. It helps ensure even cooking, but is not imperative. Put it in a baggie. 5. Measure out the lye. Be careful not to touch this stuff. It eats anything organic (YOU) and also reacts with metal. Put in a baggie. 6. Measure out the Coleman fuel or Naphtha. Put it into the 1-liter. 7. Cut open the batteries. You must do this quickly because lithium reacts with moisture in air and will become hot, possibly catching fire if it is very humid outside. Use the pipecutter to cut the outer housing of the battery. Use the needle nosed pliers to peel down the housing to expose the strip. There will be a black strip in between 2 pieces of paper. This is the one you want. BE CAREFUL. LITHIUM STRIPS MAKE A SPARK WHEN THEY COME INTO CONTACT WITH METAL. DO NOT TOUCH THE STRIP WITH YOUR BARE HANDS IF YOU CAN AVOID IT. DO NOT GET IT WET. Once you get the strip out of the battery, it can be stored in denatured alcohol, and will no longer react with air as long as it is capped. Lithium strips burn VIOLENTLY when they come into contact with water. Be CAREFUL. Procedure 1. Pour the ammonium nitrate into the 2-liter bottle (the one you didnt cut in half). 2. Add pills. Shake up to mix them together. 3. Add your 100ml Xylene or MEK solvent. At this point, you will see the ingredients starting to react, it will produce bubbles in the bottom. 4. Add the lithium strips. Take them out of the denatured alcohol, tear them into smaller pieces, and add them to the mixture. 5. Add your lye MAKING SURE to cover your Lithium strips. 6. Add the 1/4 cup of water. The water kicks off the reaction, but YOU MUST GET THE CAP ON IMMEDIATELY AFTER ADDING THE WATER. Remember Lithium reacts intensely with water and is potentially dangerous. The lithium-water reaction at normal temperatures is brisk but not violent, though the hydrogen produced can ignite. Do not add the water if your Lithium has not been buried and is UNDER YOUR LYE. 7. Add the Coleman fuel or Naphtha to this mixture. The mixture will be rolling now (it will look like it's boiling real hard). NOW THIS IS THE TRICKY AND MOST IMPORTANT PART: The reaction builds up necessary pressure inside the bottle, don't worry - you will need to let this react WITH THE CAP ON for at least 2 minutes. Let the Lithium do it's thing for a full 120 seconds. Venting or releasing pressure within the first 2-3 minutes will greatly affect your final yield. After 2 or 3 minutes you will see the Lithium starting to get smaller, shriveling up into small Bronze foil looking balls with holes throughout. This is when you MUST VENT by slightly unscrewing the cap to release the gas.
3 AFTER THE LITHIUM TURNS BRONZE MAKE SURE TO KEEP AN EYE ON THE PRESSURE INSIDE THE BOTTLE. IT CAN EASILY BUILD UP QUICKLY AND EXPLODE IF NOT VENTED PROPERLY. You can gently swirl (don’t fucking shake) the bottle side-to-side if you want, you don't have to. Swirling can only help the reaction. Be careful. The gas coming out of the bottle is straight ammonia. Do not breathe it and keep it away from your eyes. AVOID KEEPING THE CAP OFF OR VENTING THE BOTTLE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. You may have to add more lye throughout the process to keep the mixture rolling. Once every 20 mins or so. You may not have to, though. If you do, add about half of the amount as in the beginning, and do it quickly. For at least 45 minutes keep venting and swirling the mixture until it stops rolling and you have hard whitish balls (called bones) in the bottom of the bottle. This is a signal that the reaction is over. Let the contents react until you notice the whitish balls - sometimes will take 1-2 hours. Put a cotton ball in the funnel hole and 2 coffee filters over and filter the liquid into the 2-liter (the one you cut in half). Dispose of the trash accordingly. Use caution, the bottle and trash are noticeable waste items. Try to dispose of it in different locations. The trash can still be fingerprinted. USE YOUR HEAD. Gassing the liquid HCl GAS WILL RUST ANYTHING IN SIGHT. Make sure your tubing is completely airtight because you do not want leaks. Take the 20oz bottle and put about 1/3 cup salt in it. Add 4 capfuls of sulfuric acid (or muriatic acid) and put on the lid you made with the aquarium tubing. Make sure it's tight. This is your gassing gizmo. Put the end of the hose just under the surface of the liquid and squeeze the gas into it. You will see the meth dropping or "snowing" to the bottom of the liquid. Such a beautiful sight. Pull out the hose and let the 20oz fill back up with gas again. Repeat this until the meth stops dropping as much. Filter the powder out of the liquid. This process is known as a 'pull'. After the dope is filtered, you can do up to 3 more pulls from the same liquid. Usually the second pull is the best (most product, highest quality). You will have to re-mix the salt and sulfuric acid in the 20oz using fresh ingredients, because it won't last long. Make sure not to suck up any of the liquid into the 20oz, or you will have to make a new one. The gas inside the 20oz is a bad little dude itself, so use a twist tie or a rubber band to keep the tube closed (fold it in half and tie it). That's it. Let the meth dry on the filters, scrape it off, and voila. You can even use the filters in drinks to get high. The highest the dinosaur's ever been is off filters. Note: Rinsing your meth with DRY ACETONE (dry your acetone by baking Epsom Salts at 400f for 4 hours, pour the baked epsom salts into your acetone container and let sit overnight) If your meth burns leaving residue in your pipe and tastes nasty, a dual solvent recrystallization is highly recommended. i can purchase 3.6 grams a day, and up to 9 a month. so if i stay under the radar it shouldnt be a big deal the 100 pills equates to 3 grams
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A common ―starter‖ weight that speed is sold in is a quarter. It‘s called a quarter because it weighs a quarter gram, get it? That weight will usually fill up half of one of those cute 1‖ x 1‖ plastic zip-top baggies. Remember third grade math and the dreaded fractions? Here‘s where that information you thought you‘d never need comes in handy: a half is twice the amount of a quarter. Speed is also bought and sold in grams or in multiple quarters or grams. Moving on beyond the quarters and halves of the weekend warrior, we enter the realm of the teener. Like mnemonic devices? To get to the weight a teener represents think ―sweet 16‖ ‗cuz a teener is 1/16 of an ounce. Going up a rung (or down, depending on how you feel about increased quantities of meth in your life) we‘ve got the magic 8-ball. That‘s twice the weight of a teener or, 1/8 of an ounce. So an 8-ball is bigger than a teenager. Again with those damned fractions, right?
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If you buy a teener (1/16th of an ounce) and divvy it up into quarters, you‘ll get a little over 7 quarters. A teener is a little more than 1.75 grams. If you buy two teeners, you‘ve got an 8-ball. An 8-ball‘s got a little more than 14 quarters, or 3.5 grams. A little geography to confuse things a bit: teener and 8-ball are most often American terms. Remember that so you remember that they refer primarily to ounces.
in Texas 1/4 of gram is $20 1/2 of gram is $40 1 gram is $80 16th (which is a gram and 3/4 of a gram ) 120.00 8 ball which is 3 1/2 grams is $200.00 Just depending on how much of a habit you have decides the cost. You would also have to factor in how much money you had to spend as you can see here in Texas you get better pricing in quantity
Term
Amount
Going Rate in S.F.
Quarter
1/4 gram (0.01 ounce)
$20 - $40
Half
1/2 gram ( 0.02 ounce)
$40 - $80
Teenager
1/16 ounce (1.8 grams)
$120 -
8-Ball
1/8 ounce (3.5 grams)
$250 -
5
Ounce
1.00 ounce
$1200 -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/15/heres-what-breaking-bad-gets-right-and-wrongabout-the-meth-business/ So to make meth from ephedrine- Using l- or pseudo ephedrine place 1000 gms of ephedrine, 250gms of red phosphorus, and 1000ml of hydriotic acid in a suitable round bottom flask. Fit the flask with a reflux condenser and reflux the mixture for 48hrs at 120 degrees C. Add a 10% solution of sodium hydroxide until the Ph is 14. You should get an oil layer and a water layer. Separate the oil layer in a separatory funnel and put it a flask with 3 volumes of water. Rig the flask for distillation and distill the oil water mixture until the oil is mostly gone (except for highly colored globs of oil.) In the reciever flask there should be two layers, an upper oil layer and a lower water layer. Separate the oil layer and mix it with 10% hydrochloric acid until the Ph is 7.6. evaporate the water and it will crystallize into methamphetamine hcl. —— ―We have observed that mixtures containing red phosphorus, iodine and either concentrated HCl or glacial acetic acid do convert ephedrine to methamphetamine; however, when the phosphorus is omitted, methamphetamine is not formed. Ephedrine was reacted with red phosphorus and iodine in refluxing water, varying the ratios of red phosphorus and iodine; when red phosphorus and iodine are in excess of ephedrine in a 1:3.8:7.2 molar ratio (ephedrine:red phosphorus:iodine) methamphetamine is formed and the ephedrine is consumed in 8 hours.‖ Anyone have any thoughts, experience with the typical E-RP-HA when the usually separate step of creating the hydriotic acid is omitted and the three chemicals are just reacted in refluxing water. It seems like that is what is being described (along with acid substitution). —— Materials: 1. 30ml bottle tincture iodine containing 2% iodine, sodium iodide 2.4%, alcohol 47%, rest H20 2. 5 Sinustop Herbal Decongestant tablets containing 60mg crystaline pseudoephedrine HCl each mixed with some herbal ingrediants. Or 300mg of ephedrine obtained thru some other method. 3. 5 road flares. 4. Bottle of drain cleaner containg conc. H2SO4 5. Bottle white distilled vinegar 6. Red devil Lye containing sodium hydroxide 7. Spray can of brake cleaner containing 1,1,1 trichloroethylene or 1,1,1 trichloroethane Procedure: A. Purifying pseudoephedrine: 1. Take the 5 decongestant capsules, empty their contents into a small funnel with a coffee filter. Pour 50ml of cold water through the filter, and collect the liquid in a small jar. 2. Add a 1/4tsp of lye to the collected liquid. You should immediately smell the odor of ephedrine. 3. Put the resultant solution in another small jar, and add 50ml of brake cleaner, then close the lid and shake vigorously. Let stand so that the layers seperate. 4. Using a turkey baster, suck up the bottom brake cleaner layer out of the jar and put it into a small bowl. 5. Add 50ml of vinegar and heat the resultant mixure over low heat in a frying pan with 1/2 inch of water. Thus a water bath. Do not use a gas stove, since the brake cleaner vapors will produce toxic phosgene if there is contact with a flame. Instead use a hot plate or electric stove at low heat only. 6. Heat the bowl in the water bath until no more liquid is left. At the bottom will be a solid layer of a pseudoephedrine acetate.
6 B. Preparing the red phosphorus: 1. Scrape the red phosphorus off of the caps of the 5 flares and store for later use. You should get about 0.1g per flare. C. Preparing the iodine/HI solution: 1. Pour the entire bottle of the iodine tincture into a small ceramic bowl. Heat on the above type water bath until no more alcohol is left. Let cool, put in a small polyethylene jar, and add 0.1ml of the H2SO4 drain cleaner. Thats about 1/4inch of liquid in the end of an eye dropper. This converts the sodium iodide to HI. You now have a solution of iodine and HI. 2. Add the red phosphorus, and heat bottle in a water bath until the purple iodine color goes away. D. The reaction: 1. Add the pseudoephedrine acetate to the solution of HI/I and phosphorus, and heat on a water bath for 24 hours. E: Extraction: 1. Cool the reaction solution and add 1/2tsp of lye. Take the solution and perform steps A3-A6. 2. You will end up with methamphetamine acetate that you can scrape from the bowl. ———— If methamphetamine looks waxy or oily, it is probably contaminated with the HI salt of meth, an oily by-product of the red-phosphorous/HI reduction of ephedrine–the most prevalent method of clandestine manufacture. The HI salt is soluble in acetone, while the HCL salt is only very slightly soluble. The HI salt could be washed out, basified, and then precipitated with HCl gas to give methamphetmine HCL. When completely dry, methamphetamine HCL is soluble in chloroform, while ephedrine HCL is not. This would provide a convenient method of separation. [Reference: Skinner, Harry F., "Methamphetamine Synthesis Via Hydriotic Acid/Red Phosphorous Reduction Of Ephedrine," Forensic Science International, Vol 48, 1990, pp. 123-134] Super labs are real One of the most striking elements of "Breaking Bad" is the "super lab" that Walt and Jesse use to practice their science in seasons three and four. It's a huge, glittery chemistry wonderland full of brand new equipment and high cleanliness standards. It seems much too grandiose for the rough world of meth, right? Wrong, actually. Experts on the meth market say that superlabs are actually pretty common, at least among manufacturers associated with Mexican cartels. "In 2002/2003, the Sinaloa cartel saw that meth was the next big thing, and started to be active in creating these super labs and making the meth in Mexico," says Sylvia Longmire, a retired Air Force captain, author of "Cartel," and consultant on Mexican drug war issues. The United States has tight controls on the import and mass purchase of precursor materials to make meth, but they were easier to come by in Mexico, because of the country's weak justice system."Mexico has fairly strong restrictions on precursors, but there's so much corruption that restrictions don't mean a lot," Ralph Weisheit, a professor of criminal justice at Illinois State and co-author of "Methamphetamine: Its History, Pharmacology and Treatment," says. At first, the superlabs were built in Mexico, where the precursor had been imported, and then the resulting product was smuggled into the United States. But that proved too risky, and the cartels have moved to using U.S.-based superlabs. "The biggest benefit to making it here is the distribution," Longmire says. "Getting the chemicals individually into the U.S. is less risky than bringing the final product in…It's different getting caught with that than with 10 pounds of crystal meth." So the idea of a superlab hidden in a laundry in New Mexico actually isn't all that implausible.
7 It's not that hard to get methylamine This has been explained well before by Daniel Lametti at Slate, but it bears repeating. A lot of the show's drama derives from Jesse and Walt's efforts to procure methylamine, a precursor chemical. Much meth production uses pseudoephedrine, the active ingredient in some over-the-counter cold medicines like Sudafed. But restrictions of Sudafed's sale have made it difficult for meth manufacturers to get in bulk. One way to get around that is by using "smurfs," or individual Sudafed buyers who each get a small amount to avoid suspicion and then sell them to the manufacturer. But at the end of the first season, Jesse and Walt chose to switch to an alternative recipe reliant on methylamine rather than bother with getting all that Sudafed. Getting that methylamine has been tough for them. They robbed a warehouse in "A No-Rough-Stuff Type Deal" to get some, and in the fifth season they robbed a train to get it. But that needn't be so. I'll let Lametti explain: Chemically speaking, methylamine is just ammonia with one hydrogen atom swapped out for a methyl group—a carbon atom and three hydrogen atoms. Without getting into too much detail, an easy way to achieve this swap is to ―bubble‖ ammonia (a gas) through methanol (a liquid) that‘s been laced with a dehydrating agent like Silica gel. You could probably buy these chemicals at Home Depot and CVS. Silica gel packets are often packaged with new shoes and electronics to keep them dry. So why do Walt and Jesse steal methylamine? While making a thousand gallons of the chemical would be expensive, that cost pales in comparison to the profits generated by their business. However, buying a whole bunch of chemicals in bulk would probably attract unwanted attention. (The most likely answer, of course, is that having Walt and Jesse steal methylamine simply makes a good plot point.) I don't really buy the idea that buying lots of ammonia and methanol would arouse more suspicion than, you know, robbing a train, so I think the "it makes for a good plot point" explanation prevails here. Still, it's a really important plot point, with much of the first half of the fifth season's drama revolving how to get it, how to divvy it up among members of the gang, etc., so it's sort of surprising that Vince Gilligan, et al never bothered to explain why they couldn't just make the methylamine themselves. Update: Here's a good rebuttal to Lametti's argument from a chemist. Who's right is above my paygrade but if Walt agreed with that guy, it's easy to see why he would want to get methylamine another way. There are two meth markets Meth experts usually draw a distinction between two types of meth markets. One is informal, and based on meth made in small amounts, often in rural areas, and exchanged through a barter process. "That kind of production tends to be relatively nonviolent," Weisheit says. "You're not fighting over turf or meth that much, and there's not much cash trading hands as typically people are bartering — "you get this and I'll get that," or "I'll split up and you'll all get some," or " if you get these ingredients I'll teach you how to cook." The scale of that production is getting smaller and smaller as precursors get harder to come by. As Stanford med school professor Keith Humphreys points out, states that have made pseudophedrine prescription-only, such as Oregon and Mississippi, have all but eliminated their meth labs. But its social costs, while large to the users-cum-manufacturers-cum-dealers involved, are largely contained within those social networks. The main risks to the public at large come with explosions and the ensuing environmental impact, and the costs to children in households where this kind of meth production/use is happening. "I think the bad things that home growing produces are mainly damage to environment and to families, because meth users tend not, as a rule, to use it as teens, but in their mid-20s early 30s, so they will use around kids," Weisheit says. The Mexican market is very violent And then there's the Mexican market, which is large-scale, cash-heavy, very violent because of turf disputes and disputes over money, and generally much more of a concern. This is where the heavy violence involved in Gus Fring's cartel-like operation starts looking pretty realistic. "Many viewers were repulsed when Walt and Pinkman used acid to melt a body in an early episode," Patrick Reeden Keefe, a staff writer at the New Yorker who's reported
8 on the business models of Mexican cartels, oncewrote. "But this is such a common disposal technique in Mexico today that it has acquired a nickname—the guiso, or 'stew.'" Keefe also notes that Walt and Jesse's fear that they will be killed if someone else — say, Gale Boetticher — learns their recipe and can cook for Gus is well-founded: "A federal prosecutor in California told me recently about a case in which a group of American ecstasy producers entered negotiations with a Mexican cartel to manufacture large volumes of the drug, but ended up abandoning the deal when they realized that the cartel intended to keep them around just long enough to learn their recipe, then kill them." And for all the messed up acts of violence that the show's depicted over the years — a certain incident with a box cutter comes to mind, not to mentionTortuga — as Keefe says, there's no topping what Mexican cartels are capable of. The cartel with the most grotesque methods is probably Los Zetas, which once dumped 49 bodies off a highway in Cadereyta, killed six people — cutting out the hearts of three of them and carving "Z"s into the other three— in Cancun, and has recruited members by holding up buses, forcing passengers off, and them making them perform "gladiator fights" to the death, with the one survivor joining the ranks of Los Zetas. Luckily their leader was recently captured, but that mainly helps their rivals, Sinaloa, who aren't exactly saints themselves. In this part of the meth market, production typically is a few steps removed from the actual cartel. "A lot of it is subcontracted out, a lot of that is so cartels can insulate themselves from identification and prosecution," Longmire says. "Sometimes it's gang leaders, sometimes friends of friends, and sometimes they have a vague idea of who they're working for, and the cartels prefer it that way, since the guys who are cooking the meth for, say,La Familia, if they're arrested they can't roll on the people they're working for." So it's probably not likely that a cook like Jesse would meet a cartel leader like Don Eladio, as he does in "Salud." Purity matters — but maybe less so to cartels One of the most convincing critiques of the show I've read came from The New Inquiry's Malcolm Harris, who argued that the show's obsession with highly pure method — supposedly Walt's calling card, and the thing that got Gus interested in buying his wares — doesn't square with the real world, in which meth is almost always "stepped on," or diluted. There isn't a market for pure meth, not because it's not better, but because of who's buying meth. "It‘s a textbook case of what freshman economics students call inelastic demand," Harris writes. "As Stringer Bell told D‘Angelo Barksdale in another show about drugs, in direct contrast to what Walter claims, 'When it‘s good, they buy. When it‘s bad, they buy twice as much. The worse we do, the more money we make.'" Even if that logic holds, there may still be reasons for Walt to make his meth as pure as possible. "When Walt measures the purity in the lab, he‘s figuring out how much of the expensive and tightly controlled precursor chemicals became saleable product and how much went to waste," Lindsay Beyerstein at In These Times has argued. "The purer Walt‘s product, the more [distributors] can dilute it." But that doesn't explain why Walt's meth on the street, when found by his DEA agent brother-in-law Hank and analyzed by the agency's experts, is so much purer than other meth out there. Walt's product would only make it to the street like that if there really was demand for purer meth. So, is there? There certainly is a certain cachet to pure meth in the smaller meth market described above. "For the local cook, the mom and pop operation, there is an enormous amount of status and prestige that goes along with producing high quality stuff," Weisheit says. "There was a researcher who did field research on this, who interviewed a woman who said, 'A cook is a god, what they want they get. If they want sex they'll get sex.'" But Weisheit agrees with Harris that it's less likely that purity will be demanded in the larger, Mexican-run market. "There's not much stepping on it in mom and pop, he says. "You get stepping on it with Mexican distribution networks, but even there people are going to pay more attention to stuff that's really good." Longmire is more insistent that purity matters. "Obviously, the more pure that you can get it, the higher a price you can charge for it, and the more profit you can make off of it," she says. "There's always a market for higher quality drugs, it's just a question of who affords it." There will be bad, cheap meth, sure, but there are high-end markets for meth too. Weisheit notes that one of the few urban demographics where demand for meth is heavy is among gay men. "You probably don't see meth as a street drug, as it's so often sold in gay clubs where you don't tend to get
9 arrested, and they're kind of out of sight from police," he says. "[Dealers] put up signs in nightclubs, so it's an easy group to reach that way." There will obviously be demand for cheap meth in that market, sure, but there will be more demand for higher-end meth than you'd see in impoverished rural areas. Meth use is often an economic necessity One of the things that annoys me about "Breaking Bad" is its occasional depiction of meth users as largely disconnected from society and utterly desperate. That's not always true. There are "functional" addicts, especially working mothers, who rely upon strong stimulants like meth to juggle their sundry responsibilities. One plausible theory has it that the rise of meth coincided with the rise of low-paying low-skilled service work, where people had to work multiple menial jobs to earn the same amount they used to earn in one manufacturing job, or other goodpaying low-skilled position. The CDC notes that some meth users rely on it to get "increased energy to work multiple jobs." Researchers at Indiana University and at the Universities of Colorado and Kentucky have found that, "The long hours and tedious work in oil fields, agriculture, construction, ancillary health care and fast food restaurants may be more tolerable on methamphetamine. Users report using meth to provide the energy to work multiple jobs or be a good mother." Guides to identifying and treating meth addiction, like Herbert Covey's "The Methamphetamine Crisis," tell readers to look out for, "workaholics or low-income adults who use it to stay awake and perform in multiple jobs. Working low-income individuals find meth attractive because they must work several jobs or long hours to support themselves or their families. They find that higher energy and alertness (ability to stay awake for prolonged periods) helps them cope with the demands of multiple jobs." This holds up if you look at places where meth use is highest. Hawaii's heavy rate of meth use has been attributed to its high cost of living and service-based economy. "If you're doing mind-numbing, repetitive work, this enables you to overcome both the painful tedium of the boredom as well as increase concentration and safety," Dr. William Haning, a psychiatry professor at the University of Hawaii, once told the Maui News. Weishert notes that Cambodia and other countries in Southeast Asia are the biggest consumers of meth (above even the United States), and it's often used as a work aide. "Women who have to have a job and then do traditional homemaking, they're just exhausted and meth is a pick-me-up, a powerful one," he says. Laundering happens In the fourth season, Walt and Skyler buy the car wash — A1A, based on the real-life Octopus car wash in Albuquerque — where Walt used to work in order to launder Walt's copious earnings from the drug trade. Is that level of ceremony, just to clean the money, realistic? For the highest echelon of cartels, sure. "You see that with the upper level people in an organization," Weisheit says. "The lower level people don't make enough to make it worth doing that. You want to get into a legitimate business, ideally one that deals in cash like a restaurant or bar." Longmire says the higher-ups may be moving on from restaurants and bars, though. "They're using wire transfer companies like Western Union, Moneygram, Coinstar — that's increasingly popular," she says. "They're increasingly using trade-based laundering, where they'll bring in cheap fabrics from Asia and sell those into the U.S., or bring them south to Mexico, and sell them for a much higher dollar value. They're doing it through mining, construction equipment, quarter horses and gambling, casinos and a variety of different businesses." So yeah, Walt is probably doing the smart thing here. But Badger and Skinny Pete shouldn't sweat it.
