Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones. Sam is a freelance journalist today and was previously a reporter for the Los Angeles Times from 2004 to 2014. In 2021 he published The Least of Us, a National Book Critics Circle Award best nonfiction nominee.
This is a storyline that is certainly as powerful as the four previous books that I have chosen to read in order to understand the ongoing opioid crisis. Dreamland begins in Portsmouth Ohio, the book title from this community’s large historic public pool. This opening chapter certainly allowed me to remember a similar environment in northwest Ohio in my youth. However Sam then traces the explosion of black tar heroin in Columbus Ohio and Huntington West Virginia like delivery pizzas.
In fact, Sam’s story of young men who escaped poverty in Nayarit Mexico seems not uncommon. When presented with a choice of a colonial-era life that would take young men decades to acquire enough money to build a house versus selling black tar heroin for a year in the US, the choice is rather simple. By saving money the young men certainly returned with status symbols: Levi 501 jeans. This also permitted the men to quickly build lavish homes around Xalisco Nayarit.
Just when you begin to understand the early days of the opioid crisis, you soon discovery Fentanyl has killed more Americans annually than any drug in history. Yet, compared to everyday opioids (including heroine) Fentanyl is a synthetic drug — first developed in a European chemistry lab in the late 1950s.
Putting the ‘service’ in customer service
Perhaps many readers still can remember the very violent crack cocaine wars of the mid-1990s across America but centered in big cities like Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. Violent gang activity was certainly a nightly headline as deadly shootouts were commonplace.
Fast forward to a pizza delivery solution
Sam reveals a obviously simple strategy used by the Xalisco young men: customer service. In fact, this explosive growth black tar heroin was simply delivered via cars with men carrying no weapons. Furthermore, orders into a ‘call center’ allows for local pickups at a shopping mall or Walmart parking lot. Yet, as quickly as local law enforcement would arrest and transport the Xalisco offenders to jail, more and more young men from Xalisco would arrive shortly thereafter ensuring deliveries would continue.
Black tar sales commissions
While the Xalisco young men drove opioid addiction across middle America, they avoided any large metropolitan area already controlled by violent gangs. They drove their business further by forging relationships with their customers:
They even crossed the city to keep a customer, and gave away free dope to any client hinting at quitting.
One woman I met lived twenty-five miles outside Columbus and at one point she hadn’t called to buy for three days. A Xalisco Boy called her.
Señorita, why haven’t you been buying recently?
I don’t have any money, she said.
He drove out to deliver fifty dollars’ worth of heroin to her, for which he required no payment. No, it’s free, he said.
He wanted to keep me using, and buying from him,” she said. She did both.
pg. 435
He has able to convey the timing was a perfect storm: a huge shift in opioid addictions fed by pill mills, then the impact to local communities hit by big ob losses offshoring, with a domino effect across the community. Local healthcare and law enforcement in fact, never had budgets or staff to save their communities.
In conclusion, Sam delivers a very compelling look at how opioids spread across America, the men responsible from Mexico and the unique insights that result in the fading of middle American towns.