What makes you say that?

I'm not 100% sold on it yet, but my city has always been "welcoming" to homeless folks and it has never been a huge problem. Now it looks like an actual zombie apocalypse out there in some parts, and there are periodically meth busts of hundreds of pounds in just random apartments, not even kingpin types.

Combined with the anecdotal evidence from social workers, there's a whole lot of smoke out there that the "new meth" theory might explain.

As the article points out, the big change is in the production levels and the price. If meth is cheap and every dealer is flooded with it, more people are going to be using it and in higher quantities that will produce more visible (and negative) effects.

The random apartments are probably stash houses used for storage of bulk quantities that would be broken down and distributed to dealers.

Yes because what people are taking now is super pure and potent where before what was common was “dirty” meth.

> government contractors

I’m not sure I follow? I know drug fear-mongering is a favorite tactic of politicians but I’m not sure I understand what government contractors have to do with it. Are you alluding to private prisons? Or perhaps some other piggy-back industry that I’m unaware of?

It sounds like someone just watched Breaking Bad.

More that breaking bad was picking up the story that was taking place at the time when sourcing their material. There's been a lot written about the superlabs in Mexico that produce hundreds of pounds of pure product a batch. There are probably thousands of facilities like this now making this P2P cook at industrial scales.