In September 2006, as America’s meth problem finally gained national attention, Congress passed the Combat Methamphetamine Act. By the end of 2006 the government proclaimed that the war on meth had officially been won.

Three years earlier, the writer Steve Suo wrote his first story about meth in the Oregonian in an effort to determine why there was so much meth in Oregon. His subsequent articles chronicled Director for the DEA’s Office of Diversion Control Gene Haislip’s fight against ephedrine, as pharmaceutical lobbyists fought to avoid regulation of the drug. While the government mandated that ephedrine could not be imported into the United States in powder form, it made no stipulations about ephedrine pills. The drug runners simply began crushing ephedrine pills, not missing a step in their production schedules. At the same time, the NAFTA treaty made it harder to enforce border security, according to Reding.

In 1993, thanks to Haislip’s advocacy, a bill passed that limited ephedrine pills as well. This reduced the purity of meth by a substantial degree. However, pills containing pseudoephedrine—a variant of ephedrine that could also be used to make meth—remained unregulated. This made the worst 15 years of meth history possible.

By 1996, the Amezcuas were incarcerated.