Is Breaking Bad an Ad for Meth?

“Breaking Bad
blamed for shocking rise in crystal meth usage,” said the headline
over a November 3
story in The Telegraph. The subhead explained that
“a leading academic claims the critically acclaimed US show
Breaking Bad ‘instantly makes people curious’ about crystal
meth.”

In a recent Vice piece, Max Daly
debunks the claim that Breaking Bad, the excellent AMC
series about a high school chemistry teacher turned meth maestro,
made speed more popular in the U.K. Daly notes that “there is no
‘shocking’ rise of crystal meth use in Britain” and that a single
academic’s idle speculation is the only evidence that people are
experimenting with meth because they want to be just like the
tweakers on Breaking Bad. Here is how Ellis Cashmore, a
professor of media, culture, and sport at Staffordshire University,
explains this alleged phenomenon:

Although the show does not go out to glamorize the drug, its
very inclusion promotes interest in that substance. The fact it is
a central premise to almost the entire series would serve to boost
this interest for people who perhaps had not encountered it before.
One of the central protagonists, Jessie, played by Aaron Paul, is
portrayed as a drug addict, and he is now a Hollywood A-Lister. He
is a bit of a sex symbol. The fact this character who we grow to
love is taking crystal meth instantly makes people curious.

We live in a hedonistic generation where people are seeking
pleasure from various sources, and increasingly these are to be
found in the most illicit forms. Even if a TV show, like
Breaking Bad, portrays drugs in a negative aspect and
showing its most destructive side, it will still appeal to
somebody. Showing the horrendous impact of crystal meth can have a
boomerang effect and cause curiosity among some viewers who might
think “that must be good.”

I’m not surprised following the success of Breaking Bad
that we have news of a surge in the use of methamphetamine. The
fact millions of people have watched the show and been entertained
by it almost instantly glamorizes its subject matter, whether
deliberate or not.

Cashmore’s claim that viewers “grow to love” Jesse Pinkman makes
me wonder if he has actually seen the show. I eagerly watched every
episode and never felt anything remotely like love for Aaron Paul’s
character. Pity, disgust, and annoyance were my initial reactions,
and even as Jesse matured and displayed a latent streak of decency,
I found him less interesting than Walter White, Bryan Cranston’s
meth kingpin. But maybe that’s just me. 

Daly rightly criticizes Cashmore’s simplistic “monkey see,
monkey do” understanding of how people react to popular
entertainment:

If he’s onto something, why hasn’t Mad
Men quadrupled the number of cigarette smokers? Why
aren’t we all street hustlers after watching The
Wire? Surely the nation is awash with sword-wielding knights
after four seasons of Games of Thrones? Luckily, the
human brain, after the age of about ten, doesn’t work like
this. 

And if Cashmore is onto something, why didn’t meth use in the
United States rise during Breaking Bad‘s run? According to
the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, past-month use of
methamphetamine was
less common in 2013, when the series ended, than it was in
2008, when the series started. Finally, if “showing the horrendous
impact of crystal meth can have a boomerang effect,” shouldn’t we
blame the government’s absurdly hyperbolic anti-meth
propaganda for piquing interest in the drug?

Breaking Bad may not have had a measurable effect
on drug use, but it did have a noticeable impact on journalists,
who like to imagine that life imitates art. A few days after
The Telegraph claimed the show had created a fashion
for speed, the Fox station in Colorado Springs ran a story
that sought to correct the notion that it created the drug itself.
“Before ‘Breaking Bad’ even became a hit television series,” the
station noted, “meth labs and major drug busts were going on in
Colorado Springs.”

Last year Ed Krayewski
came across a Texas prosecutor with Cashmoric ideas about
Breaking Bad.