From Redding to Bakersfield, methamphetamine ensnares thousands. Some are willing participants, stepping into meth's web to feed the hunger that creates drug addicts. Some are trapped: the children, spouses, parents and siblings of meth users.

The meth trade, perhaps one of the largest businesses in the Central Valley, is booming. Federal, state and local law enforcement agents discovered more than 2,000 meth and meth-related labs in California last year, an average of more than five a day and a dramatic increase over the 559 labs discovered just five years ago. So much meth is made here -- as much as 80 percent of all meth manufactured in the nation -- that it has become a leading California export to other states. It's made by a variety of human spiders, from pathetic small-timers who labor in settings that would be laughable if they weren't so dangerous to sophisticated drug lords who pay others to work in well-equipped super labs.

Meth kills people or makes them wish they were dead. Users age prematurely and their teeth may rot, relatively benign side effects to a drug that also can induce heart damage and psychoses.

The children of meth users suffer physically and psychologically. They are neglected, abused and sometimes even killed by their parents. If their parents make meth, the children live amid toxic chemicals. If their parents are arrested, the children often end up living with strangers. In the Central Valley, more than 20,000 children are in foster care; in some areas, social workers estimate up to 90 percent of their cases are meth-related. If a drug is involved in the death of a child, experts say it is by far most likely to be meth.

The meth industry has manufactured thousands of gallons of toxic wastes that are dumped into rivers and irrigation canals and onto some of the nation's richest farmland. But not all manufacturing is done at locations populated by crops or cows. Labs show up in warehouses, suburban neighborhoods, hotel rooms and even the trunks of cars. California taxpayers spend $10 million a year on efforts to clean them up.

Meth is California's unpaid bill. It comes due in hospitals and schools, jails and courtrooms, neighborhoods and farm fields. And you pay it. Maybe it's through higher taxes or higher insurance rates. Maybe it's less direct, like waiting longer for a cop to show up to your emergency because he is tied up at a meth bust, or having your child's school lessons slowed down because of problems with the kids whose parents are addicts, or having your plumbing repaired twice because the guy who did it the first time had a head full of meth and messed it up.

Whatever it is, you pay for it.

This is the story of meth: what it is, how it got here and why. More importantly, it's a story about the people caught in its web. All the people are real, and you may know them or know someone who does. If you don't, you eventually will.