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jenni8fer 's review for:
Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic
by Sam Quinones
This book is a real eye opener to the nation's OxyContin and heroin epidemics all derived by our capitalist economy with everyone with their hand out to make a buck at the expense of others. Prior to 1980, drugs containing the morphine molecule were regulated and strictly prescribed to patients dying of cancer or leukemia, notably MSContin in the pre-1980s. Otherwise, the drug was deemed as highly addictive to be used by doctors in any other manner as referenced by the failed experiments at the turn of the 20th century when heroin was given to treat pain in patients and later the abstraction of the morphine molecule the Germans used to create morphine to treat pain in WWI soldiers. By 1980, a doctor by the name of Hershel Jick entered the scene quite accidentally and unbeknownst to him when he wrote a paragraph long letter to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, noting that opioids used to treat pain have been successful and only shown to be addictive to 1% of those prescribed the drugs. This one single paragraph was quickly taken out of context by large pharmaceutical companies on their quest to create a non-addictive, slow time-released opiate drug to be used to treat pain. In the meantime, the AMA added "pain" as number 5 to the list of vital signs of patients, along with blood pressure, pulse, etc. Purdue Pharma developed the winner of the new opiate drugs with OxyContin. Like MS Contin, Oxy was designed to be time-released. However, with "pain" now a patient vital sign, doctors now learned at medical conferences, even though they were told all through medical school that opiate drugs were highly addictive and not to lightly prescribe, that they were to prescribe pain killers to anyone with pain. Due to no regulation for the new opiates, they proved to be just as addictive as before, and now even stronger. And thus began the addictive path to OxyContin, leading kids to acquire the drugs from parents or from street dealers, and the advent of the pill mills in the MidWest, where for $250 a slimy doctor would write a prescription for OxyContin and a Medicaid card would get you a prescription of the $1,200 drug for $3.00 from the pharmacy. Oxy led to people transferring their addictions to Black Tar Heroin on the streets, a cheaper opiate alternative, that was quick and a lot more powerful than Oxy, sold by Mexicans coming into America from Xalisco, Neyurit to make a lot of money to take back to Mexico to flaunt and build big houses. The Xalisco dealers were young farm boys that operated as a cell connected to a dispatcher telling them where to make their sell. Anyway, it's a lot of information, and you should read the book. It all boils down to MONEY and our capitalist society that allowed it all to take place.