Dreamland |
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24 September 2026 - Cahors
In Dreamland, Sam Quinones weaves tales of a couple aspiring opiate businesses as they expand together with the responses of the medical and law enforcement communities. As a journalist he does this through short chapters of individuals' stories. One of the opiate businesses he chronicles is Perdue Pharma, which manages to somehow convince the medical establishment that opiates are not addictive so prescribing OxyContin widely becomes the order of the day. The other business Quinones calls the "Xalisco Boys", because groups of loosely connect rancheros from Nayarit slowly fanned out distribution of black tar heroin across the US. Calls came into dispatchers who sent drivers to deliver the heroin stored in small balloons in their mouths that could be swallowed if caught. And even if caught the amounts were so small they just got deported. No guns. No violence. Salaries for the drivers who rotated back to Mexico after a few months. And a focus on customer service while only selling to white people. Law enforcement took a long time to realize that all these small cells amounted to big business. And the Xalisco Boys supplied heroin to the opiate addicts OxyContin created. Quinones also peppers the tale with the stories of those who fell prey to opiates. Many, many sad stories. This book is 10 years old, but one cannot help seeing the more recent destructive drug trends pushed on children as drug companies giving us more of the same.
