by Sam Quinones
First published 2016
Sam Quinones traces how two separate forces converged to create America's opioid crisis. The first story follows Big Pharma's aggressive marketing of OxyContin during the 1990s, when Purdue Pharma pushed doctors to prescribe their expensive and highly addictive painkiller with few restrictions. The second chronicles Mexican entrepreneurs from a single county who flooded American towns with cheap, potent black tar heroin using sophisticated distribution networks that operated independently of major cartels. Quinones shows how these parallel developments devastated communities across the heartland, from Tennessee to Oregon. He introduces readers to pharmaceutical executives, young Mexican dealers, law enforcement officers, addiction survivors, and grieving parents whose lives intersected in this crisis. The author uses Portsmouth, Ohio as a central example, a blue collar city that once boasted a football field sized public swimming pool called Dreamland but now struggles with widespread addiction. Through meticulous reporting and compelling storytelling, Quinones reveals how unchecked capitalism in both legal and illegal drug markets created a perfect storm that continues to destroy American communities.
Genres: history, addiction, crime, non-fiction, journalism, current-affairs, drugs, american-history
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: social-commentary, true-story
Setting: America, Tennessee, Oregon, Portsmouth, Ohio
Period: 1990s
400 pages · Paperback · Bloomsbury Publishing
Content warnings: addiction, drug-use, substance-abuse