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mkesten 's review for:
Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic
by Sam Quinones
I was just finishing “Dreamland” — a book published in 2015, before the Trump reign — as the returns of the 2020 election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump came rolling in. Early on there was a hint that Biden might flip Ohio from the Republicans, but that was not to be.
Dreamland is largely set in the border town of Portsmouth, Ohio, facing Kentucky on the Ohio River.
The area appears to be part of the Republican rural stronghold.
According to Quinones compelling, strange, and frightening story it was also Ground Zero for the confluence of two major trends in rural American life: the seeming endless supplies of painkillers sometimes dispensed by dubious “pills mills,” pain treatment clinics, and the growth of high grade heroine imported by an endless stream of drug runners from a small, poor, and rural Mexican community.
Not only were poor, often unemployed in rural America subject to the pill economy, but relatively wealthy suburbanites and their children were dragged into it, sometimes motivated by the same forces that kept them on top: affluence.
Even as I read this book hundreds of millions of pain killers are prescribed across America — and here in Canada — where physicians often haven’t the time nor the expertise to manage paid reduction regimens, or the expertise to wean their patients off them.
Quinones’ story begins with a small town in prosperous America enjoying the industrial expansion of the early 1900’s and ends with that same town trying to repair its footing after most of the jobs have left, the town tax rolls impoverished, and a booming business in drug rehab.
The pain and resentment of Trump followers aside, rural America is slowly making a comeback, particularly as the COVID pandemic moves a lot of those downtown urban jobs back to the hinterland.
This is a story of communities in evolution.
It’s not pretty but really relevant.
Dreamland is largely set in the border town of Portsmouth, Ohio, facing Kentucky on the Ohio River.
The area appears to be part of the Republican rural stronghold.
According to Quinones compelling, strange, and frightening story it was also Ground Zero for the confluence of two major trends in rural American life: the seeming endless supplies of painkillers sometimes dispensed by dubious “pills mills,” pain treatment clinics, and the growth of high grade heroine imported by an endless stream of drug runners from a small, poor, and rural Mexican community.
Not only were poor, often unemployed in rural America subject to the pill economy, but relatively wealthy suburbanites and their children were dragged into it, sometimes motivated by the same forces that kept them on top: affluence.
Even as I read this book hundreds of millions of pain killers are prescribed across America — and here in Canada — where physicians often haven’t the time nor the expertise to manage paid reduction regimens, or the expertise to wean their patients off them.
Quinones’ story begins with a small town in prosperous America enjoying the industrial expansion of the early 1900’s and ends with that same town trying to repair its footing after most of the jobs have left, the town tax rolls impoverished, and a booming business in drug rehab.
The pain and resentment of Trump followers aside, rural America is slowly making a comeback, particularly as the COVID pandemic moves a lot of those downtown urban jobs back to the hinterland.
This is a story of communities in evolution.
It’s not pretty but really relevant.