

How Has Breaking Bad Impacted the Meth Business? - ezl

Breaking Bad is popular.<p>Popular enough that food coloring dyed blue meth has shown up in the streets [1] despite the fact that there is no actual chemical process to make blue meth the way it&#x27;s described in the show [2].<p>This is interesting because it means that meth producers and drug dealers are savvy and using pop culture to drive marketing&#x2F;sales decisions despite the fact that the product is unambiguously worse in quality&#x2F;purity (probably implying something about the level of &quot;research&quot; that end consumers use).<p>Drug dealers and consumers are using Breaking Bad to drive production and purchasing decisions:<p>So the question, in several parts:<p>1. How has the popularity of Breaking Bad impacted the prevalence, popularity, price, consumption, availability and arrest rates for meth?<p>2. What do these numbers look like:<p>(A) over the 6 year lifetime of Breaking Bad,
(B) by geography (are there bigger spikes (if there are spikes) in New Mexico vs Massachusetts)
(C) by demographic<p>[1] http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.telegraph.co.uk&#x2F;culture&#x2F;tvandradio&#x2F;10338805&#x2F;Breaking-Bad-facts-30-things-you-didnt-know.html
[2] http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.salon.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;08&#x2F;22&#x2F;so_what_if_pure_meth_isnt_really_blue_partner&#x2F;
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MalcolmDiggs
Drawing a causal relationship between Breaking Bad and what happens in the
'real world' would be hard to do. That being said, there are some reports
released occasionally by various government agencies that track the kind of
stats you're looking for. One of the big ones is the Illegal Drug Price/Purity
Report put out by the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

[http://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/price-and-
purity](http://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/price-and-purity)

Unfortunately they aren't released very often, so they may not have the data
you need for a few more years. They may release intermediate / preliminary
reports, I'm not sure. Worth looking into.

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atmosx
I think a stronger example of popular culture impacting _criminals_ was the
movie "Scarface" with Al Pacino. I saw a documentary about the impact the
movie had on low-level gangsters even a decade after it was released (people
acting, dressing and talking on purpose like Tony Montana), but I'm too bored
to search onine for links :-(

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percept
The Godfather, too (or maybe II).

