by Daniel Sneider

About the author: Daniel Sneider is a staff writer for the Christian Science Monitor newspaper in Boston.

Set in a narrow valley in California’s North Coast region, Potter Valley seems like an ideal place to raise a family. Cows and horses graze near pear orchards and grape vineyards. Children ride freely on their bikes.

Beneath this bucolic idyll, however, lies quite a different reality. Potter Valley, a small town of 3,000 people, is caught in the grip of a new drug epidemic that is as deadly and dangerous as any seen before. The drug is methamphetamine, a powerful stimulant that law-enforcement officials have labeled the “crack cocaine of the ’90s.”

Spreading Eastward

In regions like northern California, methamphetamine ranks second only to alcohol in usage. The drug is now spreading from the...