History of Meth
Methamphetamine was invented in a lab in the 1890s, powered soldiers through World War II, and swept postwar Japan and America. Its story is a century of the same mistake, and today's version is the most dangerous yet.
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What the History of Meth Reveals
Methamphetamine’s story runs from a chemistry bench in the 1890s to the trenches of World War II, the ruins of postwar Japan, American diet-pill counters, backwoods lab fires, and today’s cartel superlabs. Told plainly, it is the same mistake on repeat.
A powerful stimulant gets sold as a solution, the harm arrives later, and ordinary people pay for it. None of this is a museum piece. The drug at the end of the story is stronger and cheaper than ever, yet the way out of it is better understood now than at any point in that long history.
If methamphetamine has a grip on you or someone you love, recovery is real, and you can find help today.
| Year | Moment in Meth’s History |
|---|---|
| 1887 | Lazăr Edeleanu first synthesizes amphetamine in Berlin |
| 1893 | Nagai Nagayoshi synthesizes methamphetamine from ephedrine |
| 1919 | Akira Ogata crystallizes methamphetamine |
| 1938 | Germany markets methamphetamine as Pervitin |
| Late 1940s | Surplus wartime meth fuels Japan’s first epidemic |
| 1970 | The Controlled Substances Act makes meth Schedule II |
| 1990s | Small toxic meth labs spread across rural America |
| 2006 | The Combat Meth Act puts pseudoephedrine behind the counter |
| Today | Mexican superlab meth is cheaper, purer, and often near fentanyl |
- Meth is older than most people think. Amphetamine was first made in 1887 and methamphetamine in 1893, with the smokable crystal form following in 1919[1][2].
- World War II ran partly on meth. Germany issued millions of methamphetamine tablets branded Pervitin to keep soldiers awake through the 1940 blitzkrieg[3].
- Japan had the first modern meth epidemic. After 1945, military stockpiles were released to the public, hooking hundreds of thousands and forcing a 1951 control law[2].
- Meth is a Schedule II drug in the United States. The 1970 Controlled Substances Act placed it there, alongside one narrow legal product still prescribed today[4].
- A 2006 law reshaped the whole supply. Moving pseudoephedrine behind the counter shut down home labs but handed the market to Mexican superlabs making cheaper, purer meth[5][6].
Amphetamine and Meth Were Born in the Laboratory
Long before it hit any street, methamphetamine was a laboratory curiosity. Amphetamine came first, synthesized in 1887 by the Romanian chemist Lazăr Edeleanu, who saw no use for it and set it aside for decades[1]. The stimulant had arrived years ahead of any reason to want it.
Amphetamine Came First in 1887
Amphetamine sat unused because no one knew what it was for. That changed in the 1920s and 1930s, when researchers rediscovered it as a stimulant and a decongestant, launching it as the Benzedrine inhaler in 1932[1]. A shelved chemical had become a mass-market drug.
Nagai Nagayoshi Synthesized Methamphetamine
Methamphetamine has its own inventor. The Japanese chemist Nagai Nagayoshi first synthesized it from ephedrine in 1893, and in 1919 his countryman Akira Ogata worked out how to crystallize it, creating the smokable form now called crystal meth[2]. The most potent version of the drug is also among the oldest.
World War II Ran on Amphetamines
The first mass use of methamphetamine was military. In the late 1930s the German firm Temmler marketed methamphetamine as an over-the-counter pill called Pervitin, and the Wehrmacht bought it by the millions to keep troops awake and fearless[3]. Chemists had made the perfect soldier’s drug, and an army reached for it.
Germany Marched on Pervitin
Pervitin fueled the 1940 blitzkrieg through France, where drugged, sleepless troops pushed forward faster than commanders thought possible[3]. The advantage was real and short-lived. As tolerance set in, soldiers needed more for less effect, and the side effects turned dangerous[3].
The Allies and Japan Used Stimulants Too
Germany was not alone. British and American forces leaned on amphetamine, usually as Benzedrine tablets handed out to airmen and infantry to fight fatigue[1]. Japan gave methamphetamine to its own troops and factory workers, and accounts persist of kamikaze pilots dosed before their final flights[2].
Postwar Japan Faced the First Meth Epidemic
When the war ended, the drug did not disappear. It flooded the streets. Japan’s military stockpiles of methamphetamine were released to the public after 1945, and a hungry, exhausted country reached for cheap, legal energy[2]. The world’s first modern meth epidemic followed almost immediately.
Japan’s Stockpiles Became Its First Epidemic
By the early 1950s, Japanese officials estimated that hundreds of thousands of people were using methamphetamine, with some counts running far higher[2]. The government answered with a Stimulant Control Law in 1951 that pulled the drug out of open sale, the first of many countries to learn this lesson the hard way[2].
America Was Prescribing Amphetamines by the Ton
The United States took a slower, more medical road to the same place. Doctors prescribed amphetamines freely from the 1930s onward for depression, fatigue, and weight loss, and legal production climbed into the billions of pills a year by the 1960s[1]. This was America’s first amphetamine epidemic, and it wore a prescription label.
America’s Long Affair With Diet Pills and Speed
Amphetamine wove itself into ordinary American life. Housewives took it to lose weight and keep up, students took it to cram, truckers took it to drive through the night, and soldiers carried it into Korea and Vietnam[1]. For decades the drug looked less like a menace than a helper.
Diet Pills Put Amphetamine in Millions of Homes
Weight-loss clinics and “rainbow” diet pills turned amphetamine into a household staple through the 1950s and 1960s[1]. The drug’s grip only became undeniable once dependence and abuse spread far beyond any medical need, and regulators began pulling back[1].
Speed Freaks and the Sixties Backlash
By the 1960s a harder scene had emerged. Injectable methamphetamine, known simply as speed, took hold in cities like San Francisco, and the slogan “speed kills” captured a generation’s dawning fear of it[1]. The wonder drug of the diet clinic had shown its other face.
How Meth Became Illegal in the United States
The legal reckoning finally caught up in 1970. The Controlled Substances Act sorted regulated drugs into five schedules, and methamphetamine landed in Schedule II, a high potential for abuse alongside a narrow accepted medical use[7]. Meth was now a controlled drug rather than a pharmacy staple.
The 1970 Controlled Substances Act Scheduled Meth
Schedule II placed meth in the same tier as cocaine and fentanyl, legal only through tightly controlled prescriptions[4]. Enforcement tightened through the 1970s as the medical supply was reined in, and the amphetamines that once filled American medicine cabinets grew far harder to obtain legally[1].
Meth never became fully illegal. A prescription tablet called Desoxyn is still approved in tightly limited cases, which is why methamphetamine sits in Schedule II rather than the Schedule I reserved for drugs with no accepted medical use[4].
Bikers and the Crank Years
As the legal supply dried up, illegal production moved in. Through the 1970s and 1980s, outlaw motorcycle gangs dominated American meth-making, cooking a form called crank and smuggling it in the crankcases of their bikes, which is where the name came from[2]. Meth had gone underground, and it stayed there.
The Meth-Lab Epidemic of the 1990s and 2000s
In the 1990s meth production spilled out of biker clubhouses and into ordinary neighborhoods. A crude recipe using ephedrine or pseudoephedrine, the decongestant in common cold pills, let almost anyone cook meth in a kitchen, trailer, or motel room[8]. Small toxic labs spread first across the rural West and Midwest, then the South.
Cold-Medicine Labs Spread Across Rural America
The homemade labs were dangerous to everyone nearby, not just the cook. The process is volatile enough to cause fires and explosions, and it leaves behind toxic waste that contaminates homes for years[8]. The scale of the damage is why meth labs became a public-health emergency in their own right, far beyond the people who used the drug.
The Government Targeted the Cold-Pill Supply
The labs shared one weakness: they all needed pseudoephedrine. Lawmakers realized that choking off that single ingredient could shut down the home-cooking model, and by the mid-2000s state and federal action was converging on the pharmacy shelf[5]. That strategy became the 2005 Combat Meth Act.
The 2005 Combat Meth Act Reshaped the Supply
The Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005 went after the recipe’s weak link. Signed in 2006, it moved pseudoephedrine and related cold medicines behind the pharmacy counter, capped how much a person could buy, and required photo ID and a signed logbook for every sale[5]. Home-lab seizures fell sharply in the years that followed.
The Law Worked, and the Market Moved
Cutting off pseudoephedrine did shrink the home labs, but it did not shrink demand. Mexican drug cartels stepped into the gap, mass-producing methamphetamine in industrial superlabs and shipping it north[6]. The result was more meth, not less, and it was purer and cheaper than the homemade kind[6].
| Home-lab meth, 1990s to mid-2000s | Cartel superlab meth, today |
|---|---|
| Cooked from cold-pill pseudoephedrine | Made by the P2P chemical method |
| Small batches in homes and trailers | Industrial batches in Mexican superlabs |
| Lower, inconsistent purity | Very high purity, very low price |
| Local fires, burns, toxic homes | Nationwide supply, often near fentanyl |
Cartel Superlabs Made Meth Purer and Cheaper
To sidestep the pseudoephedrine controls, the superlabs revived an older recipe built on P2P chemistry, which uses industrial precursors that are far harder to restrict[6]. Today’s meth is the most potent and abundant in the drug’s history, and it increasingly shares the same supply chain as fentanyl[6].
Meth Still Harms Lives, and Recovery Is Real
None of this history is safely in the past. Methamphetamine is more available today than at any point in its long story, and the current supply carries a danger the older versions did not: it is increasingly cut with or sold beside fentanyl[9]. The drug’s past is still being written in emergency rooms.
Today’s Meth Is Purer and Often Near Fentanyl
The overdose numbers tell the story. Methamphetamine deaths rose sharply over the past two decades, and by 2021 most also involved an opioid such as fentanyl[9]. Researchers now describe meth and cocaine, riding alongside fentanyl, as the fourth wave of the overdose crisis[10]. The full picture of that shift belongs to the stimulant epidemic.
Beyond overdose, heavy meth use scars the body and mind. It can trigger a lasting methamphetamine psychosis of paranoia and hallucinations[11], weaken the heart into cardiomyopathy[12], and cause strokes in otherwise young adults[13]. These are the human costs behind the history.
Meth Addiction Is Treatable
Here is the hopeful part, and it is just as real as the harm. People leave methamphetamine behind every day, and the body recovers more than most expect: when meth use stops, weakened hearts often regain strength[14]. Treating stimulant addiction looks different from treating opioids or alcohol, and knowing that difference points toward help that works.
- No medication treats meth the way methadone treats opioids. The proven first-line approach is behavioral, not a prescription[15].
- Contingency management has the strongest evidence. Rewarding verified drug-free tests consistently helps people stop using meth[15].
- The heart and mind heal with time. Much of meth’s damage eases once the drug is gone and support is in place[14].
The approach with the best track record is contingency management, and the clearest lesson of meth’s long history is that the drug has always promised more than it delivers[15]. The way out begins with reaching for help instead of hiding.
To understand the drug itself rather than its past, start with meth and how addiction takes hold and how it fits the wider stimulant picture. For the modern crisis, see the stimulant epidemic and how meth and opioids collide in a contaminated supply. For a parallel story, read the history of cocaine.
Frequently asked questions
When Was Meth First Made?
Amphetamine, meth’s chemical parent, was first synthesized in 1887 by the Romanian chemist Lazăr Edeleanu, who found no use for it at the time[1]. Methamphetamine itself is nearly as old: the Japanese chemist Nagai Nagayoshi made it from ephedrine in 1893, and Akira Ogata crystallized it into the smokable form now called crystal meth in 1919[2]. The drug spent decades as a laboratory and medical product before it became a street drug.
Was Meth Really Used in World War II?
Yes. Germany issued methamphetamine as an over-the-counter pill called Pervitin, handing out millions of tablets to keep soldiers awake and aggressive during the 1940 blitzkrieg[3]. The drug was not confined to one side: British and American forces relied on amphetamine, usually Benzedrine, to fight fatigue[1], and Japan gave methamphetamine to its troops and workers as well[2]. Wartime production left stockpiles that fed the epidemics to come.
Why Is Meth a Schedule II Controlled Substance?
Under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, the U.S. government sorts regulated drugs into five schedules. Methamphetamine is Schedule II, meaning it has a high potential for abuse and dependence but a narrow accepted medical use, the same tier as cocaine and fentanyl[7]. Meth never became fully illegal because a prescription product, Desoxyn, is still approved in tightly limited cases, which keeps it out of Schedule I[4].
What Did the Combat Meth Act of 2005 Do?
The Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005, signed in 2006, moved pseudoephedrine and related cold medicines behind the pharmacy counter, capped how much a person could buy, and required photo ID and a signed logbook for each sale[5]. It worked at shutting down the small home labs that depended on cold pills, but it did not reduce demand. Production shifted to Mexican cartel superlabs, which now supply most of the meth in the United States[6].
Why Is Today's Meth More Dangerous?
After cold-pill controls closed the home labs, Mexican cartels scaled up methamphetamine using the P2P chemical method, which relies on industrial precursors that are hard to restrict[6]. The result is meth that is purer, cheaper, and more available than ever before[6]. The supply is also increasingly cut with or sold alongside fentanyl, which is why methamphetamine deaths have climbed and most now involve an opioid[9].
Is Meth Addiction Treatable?
Yes, and recovery happens every day. Stimulant addiction is treated differently from opioids or alcohol because no medication does for meth what methadone does for opioids, so behavioral treatment is the proven first-line approach[15]. Contingency management, which rewards verified drug-free tests, has the strongest evidence[15], and the body heals more than people expect once the drug stops, with weakened hearts often regaining strength[14]. You can find treatment and people who can help at /find-treatment-help/.
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