By the numbers: Missouri's reign as America's meth king

How will it end?

Methamphetamine was already a serious enough issue in the U.S. in the early 2000s, with years featuring more than 20,000 incidents nationwide. Then, “Breaking Bad” came along, spiking the nation’s collective interest in meth for the last five years.

But has the increased curiosity been during a time when meth use in the U.S. is on the decline? Spoiler: The answer is yes. Earlier this month, the Drug Enforcement Administration announced that there had been 12,694 meth lab incidents in 2012. The number represented a drop-off from the 13,390 incidents in 2011 and an even bigger decrease from the 15,196 incidents from 2010.

Still, a small number of states continue to make up the core for reported methamphetamine-related incidents in the last five years. The king of this group is Missouri, a state that has led the U.S. in meth lab incidents every year except one since 2003, according to the Associated Press. In the fiscal year 2012, Missouri's drug task forces made 9,000 arrests in 21,000 cases related to methamphetamine, according to KSMU.

And there are bigger issues for the state moving forward. With federal funding for Missouri's regional drug task force hitting an all-time low this year, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon carved out $3 million in next year's budget. But there remains some uncertainty about how much funding will be available to help the state on the meth front after 2014.

Missouri State Highway Patrol Capt. Tim Hull has seen Missouri’s meth problem boil up for some time now. The influx of meth into the state started to gain traction in the mid-90s, with more meth product coming from the West Coast. Since then, the issue has stayed in rural parts of Missouri that are close enough to metropolitan areas such as St. Louis and Kansas City, Hull said. The spike in meth-related crimes has also seeped to neighboring states like Kentucky and Tennessee. 

“We’ve been at the forefront of the battle against meth since that time,” Hull told America Tonight. He added: “Some people feel Missouri might have a very bad meth problem, but we look at it as us being very aggressive in looking for and seizing these labs.”

Even as “Breaking Bad” comes to an end, it’s vital to understand how far the U.S. has come in cutting down meth-related cases – and how far some states still have to go.

“It continues to be an ongoing problem that we deal with in Missouri on a daily and yearly basis,” said Hull, “and it’s something we’ll continue to do as long as it’s out there.”

Here are some of the most important numbers behind methamphetamine in the U.S. – before and during the era of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman.