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lpm100 's review for:
Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic
by Sam Quinones
3.0 out of 5 stars Good, but a bit too long. A definite agenda
Reviewed in the United States on October 14, 2018
Verified Purchase
The author is very careful about building up his agenda over several hundred pages, but he has one just the same.
Narrative Themes:
1. The United States existed in some ideal state in the past.
2. Then an economy in one place was hollowed out by changes in the general economy.
3. Some people somewhere went on disability (instead of unemployment), and physicians readily prescribed pain meds (which were addictive).
4. This act paved the way for harder drugs (black tar, in this case--provided by Mexicans from one particular region of Mexico).
5. The white knight (government) came in to rescue people from being victims of the Big Bad Corporations and the vacuum created by not having enough Virtuous Government.
6. Intelligent Jewish businessman (i.e., the Sackler Brothers) seeing opportunities that nobody had ever seen before.
All of this is wrapped around copious amounts of personal stories and anecdotal evidence.
Cast of Characters (these are general form characters, because the number of people in this book is just *dizzying*):
1. Police detectives
2. Dealers.
3. Junkies
4. Pharmaceutical companies.
5. Scientists/ Corrupt Physicians.
6. Regulatory Agencies.
7. Black people. (And they are put in insofar as they are NOT part of the story. Mexicans don't sell to them, don't buy from them, and don't look for ANY interaction with them. They are not represented among the addicts in this story. And they are not a focus of government policy because they just aren't important/ informed enough as a voting block. p. 45, 144, 163, 261.)
8. (p. 63.) Immigrants coming to the United States to chase their dreams. Specific subgroups of immigrants from one particular place generating an industry.
9. Insurance companies (third parties) that pervert the process of recovery / pain management because they will only pay for what they want to pay for.
Epistemic/ Foundational Themes:
1. Treatment of drug use as a moral issue and not a cost benefit/ hedonistic one. (Drugs can be so many different things to so many different people!)
2. Demonizing of drug companies (that are just businesses who are out to serve their raison d'etre of making money).
3. Characterization of the drug business as just that-- a business. (Predictably, it needs to be set up as a business so that it can be demonized some more.)
4. Government being the last entity to know that something is going wrong. (The drug cartels had a sprawling, razor sharp business model that was developed *long* before any cops knew what was going on.)
5. The private market being much more responsive, adaptive, customer oriented and fast.
6. Decriminalization of drug addiction and treatment thereof as an illness.
One topic that is not taken up at any point in this fairly long book is that prohibition itself is the problem, and that it would be easiest to just not get into this issue at all. (But that then would request that the government become even smaller. It would also entail leaving people to be free to live their lives, even if that life was at somebody who like recreational drugs.)
It has been noted (in this book and others) that drug cartels are smarter and more responsive and better organized than government agencies. And the easiest way to compromise your law enforcement agencies is to set them in conflict with people who are easily able to buy them off.
Another point is that this book does, in some sense, vindicate Donald Trump because a huge part of the market for illegal drugs really does come from Mexico and South America.
I also wonder how big is the scale of this effect. (Portsmouth, Ohio is a town of 20,000 people.)
All in all, I would have to say that this author does a reasonably good job of unwinding the threads of the rich tapestry that are the drug problem in the United States.
Verdict: Recommended, but wait until this goes down to about $1 plus shipping.
Reviewed in the United States on October 14, 2018
Verified Purchase
The author is very careful about building up his agenda over several hundred pages, but he has one just the same.
Narrative Themes:
1. The United States existed in some ideal state in the past.
2. Then an economy in one place was hollowed out by changes in the general economy.
3. Some people somewhere went on disability (instead of unemployment), and physicians readily prescribed pain meds (which were addictive).
4. This act paved the way for harder drugs (black tar, in this case--provided by Mexicans from one particular region of Mexico).
5. The white knight (government) came in to rescue people from being victims of the Big Bad Corporations and the vacuum created by not having enough Virtuous Government.
6. Intelligent Jewish businessman (i.e., the Sackler Brothers) seeing opportunities that nobody had ever seen before.
All of this is wrapped around copious amounts of personal stories and anecdotal evidence.
Cast of Characters (these are general form characters, because the number of people in this book is just *dizzying*):
1. Police detectives
2. Dealers.
3. Junkies
4. Pharmaceutical companies.
5. Scientists/ Corrupt Physicians.
6. Regulatory Agencies.
7. Black people. (And they are put in insofar as they are NOT part of the story. Mexicans don't sell to them, don't buy from them, and don't look for ANY interaction with them. They are not represented among the addicts in this story. And they are not a focus of government policy because they just aren't important/ informed enough as a voting block. p. 45, 144, 163, 261.)
8. (p. 63.) Immigrants coming to the United States to chase their dreams. Specific subgroups of immigrants from one particular place generating an industry.
9. Insurance companies (third parties) that pervert the process of recovery / pain management because they will only pay for what they want to pay for.
Epistemic/ Foundational Themes:
1. Treatment of drug use as a moral issue and not a cost benefit/ hedonistic one. (Drugs can be so many different things to so many different people!)
2. Demonizing of drug companies (that are just businesses who are out to serve their raison d'etre of making money).
3. Characterization of the drug business as just that-- a business. (Predictably, it needs to be set up as a business so that it can be demonized some more.)
4. Government being the last entity to know that something is going wrong. (The drug cartels had a sprawling, razor sharp business model that was developed *long* before any cops knew what was going on.)
5. The private market being much more responsive, adaptive, customer oriented and fast.
6. Decriminalization of drug addiction and treatment thereof as an illness.
One topic that is not taken up at any point in this fairly long book is that prohibition itself is the problem, and that it would be easiest to just not get into this issue at all. (But that then would request that the government become even smaller. It would also entail leaving people to be free to live their lives, even if that life was at somebody who like recreational drugs.)
It has been noted (in this book and others) that drug cartels are smarter and more responsive and better organized than government agencies. And the easiest way to compromise your law enforcement agencies is to set them in conflict with people who are easily able to buy them off.
Another point is that this book does, in some sense, vindicate Donald Trump because a huge part of the market for illegal drugs really does come from Mexico and South America.
I also wonder how big is the scale of this effect. (Portsmouth, Ohio is a town of 20,000 people.)
All in all, I would have to say that this author does a reasonably good job of unwinding the threads of the rich tapestry that are the drug problem in the United States.
Verdict: Recommended, but wait until this goes down to about $1 plus shipping.