In the 1980s, the United States began to tighten regulations around the sale and use of the ephedrine–a pharmaceutical precursor used to make crystal meth. As a result, illegal meth labs turned to an easier to obtain precursor—pseudoephedrine—a chemical found in many cold medicines.
Use of crystal meth in the United States exploded in the early 1990s. Between 1994 and 2004, methamphetamine use rose from just under two percent of the U.S. adult population to approximately five percent.
In 2006, the
United Nations World Drug Report called meth the most abused hard drug on Earth.
Meth use has declined over the past decade, possibly as a result of limits put on the sale of pseudoephedrine in many countries. In the United States, in 2012, roughly 1.2 million people (about 0.4 percent of the U.S. population) reported using meth in the past year.