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A review by atomic_tourist
Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones
In Dreamland, Sam Quinones weaves together the story of Purdue Pharma's OxyContin with the story of how black tar heroin appeared in the U.S: the result was the devastating opioid epidemic, which has claimed more than 1 million lives.
Quinones's personality and beliefs were dominant in this work; I especially struggled with the amount of copaganda and Quinones's willingness to praise Republicans and conservatives. Which sucked, because Dreamland reveals a narrative that is both important and fascinating. I wish I'd gotten to learn about it from a journalist with more willingness to question the status quo and the role of the state, instead of enduring long paragraphs waxing poetic about some cop's backstory.
The space Quinones used to glorify the police and feds could have been used to discuss so many things: What are the attitudes in affected communities towards needle exchanges/harm reduction? What do insurance companies have to say about their role in the opioid epidemic? (Why didn't Quinones interview anyone from an insurance company? He brings them up quite often.) How has national-scale politics responded to the opioid crisis? What about bringing up the protests and sit-ins against Purdue Pharma? (This book was published in 2015, before the infamous 2019 'die-in' at the Guggenheim, but there were still protests against Purdue even back then!)
Dreamland tells a tragic story, but I wish it had gone deeper into the corruption that enabled the opiod crisis to occur, instead of heaping compliments onto politicians who would not have acted had it not affected their lily-white, rich towns.
Quinones's personality and beliefs were dominant in this work; I especially struggled with the amount of copaganda and Quinones's willingness to praise Republicans and conservatives. Which sucked, because Dreamland reveals a narrative that is both important and fascinating. I wish I'd gotten to learn about it from a journalist with more willingness to question the status quo and the role of the state, instead of enduring long paragraphs waxing poetic about some cop's backstory.
The space Quinones used to glorify the police and feds could have been used to discuss so many things: What are the attitudes in affected communities towards needle exchanges/harm reduction? What do insurance companies have to say about their role in the opioid epidemic? (Why didn't Quinones interview anyone from an insurance company? He brings them up quite often.) How has national-scale politics responded to the opioid crisis? What about bringing up the protests and sit-ins against Purdue Pharma? (This book was published in 2015, before the infamous 2019 'die-in' at the Guggenheim, but there were still protests against Purdue even back then!)
Dreamland tells a tragic story, but I wish it had gone deeper into the corruption that enabled the opiod crisis to occur, instead of heaping compliments onto politicians who would not have acted had it not affected their lily-white, rich towns.