Anthropologist Jason Pine embedded with a community of crystal meth users in rural Missouri. He found some cases in which three generations in a single family manufacture and use it. Excerpt:

Others began at home, often because their parents, older siblings, or grandparents were making it. I talked to people in prison who began when they were in elementary school. Some users will administer it to their children—they’ll blow it into their mouths if they’re smoking it. They want to share it with their children; they want to experience it together, feel closer. If there’s no entertainment, no sports, nothing to do after school—you need money to pay for gas, to go to the movies—the main activities are drinking, smoking weed. The boundaries are blurry.

UPDATE: Reader AHunt comments:

Methamphetamine has savaged so many families in our rural lower mid-Michigan community, and there does not seem to be any end in sight.

The epidemic (and I do not use the word lightly)was actually the catalyst for our Pay It Forward program, an FB page aimed at providing a floor of existence for the children of chronic users, as well as a simple general assistance program for struggling families in our area.

Meth and alcohol abuse go hand in hand, and high school kids who once worked hard and well for us are now in prison for felony violence and theft. Families are shredded, or never form in the first place.

We tap every resource; public social support, law enforcement, women’s shelters, Lifeways, employment services, Catholic and Lutheran Social Services, 211, the Lions, area churches…we even have a dentist who quietly provides free care to the youngest victims, the children of addicts.

But we are losing the battle. Rod, among the reasons I read this blog so faithfully are the constant reminders that compassion has limits, that we must face reality, and that sometimes, we just have to let go.