Dreamland
Sam Quinones chronicles how, over the past 15 years, enterprising sugar cane farmers in a small county on the west coast of Mexico created a unique distribution system that brought black tar heroin-- the cheapest, most addictive form of the opiate, 2 to 3 times purer than its white powder cousin-- to the veins of people across the United States.
Stats for nerds
15recommend
24mentions
19people
2015–2024years
83% recommend17% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I found the two Sam Quinones books on the US opiate epidemic fascinating.
- Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic
- The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth
- "Dreamland" by Sam Quinones has everything you need in the subject. Terrific read, top 10 IMHO.
- Quinones previous book on the issue 'Dreamland' was very good.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22529381-dreamland
Econtalk on that book :
https://www.econtalk.org/sam-quinones-on-heroin-the-opioid-e...
- I think what you're saying makes sense. I just want to pull out the idea a bit more.
Mexico is a country with a massive informal economy. For every McDonalds that operates in the formal sector, there are millions of small business operators who are totally off the radar.
The cartel is the McDonalds. The narco-technocrats are the thousands of taco carts off the metro crammed into every corner of Mexico City.
Two technocrats, sure, they wouldn't break the bank. But it's not tremendously difficult to get a package across the Guatemalan border, drive it up to Tijuana, and have your cousin with a drone fly it across the border where your other cousin picks it up on the other side.
There's no overhead. There's no need to pay protection money. There's no need to pay off police. There's no psychos in your organization calling attention to you.
This is the same thing that happened with black tar heroin distribution in the United States. A low-key family operation run by guys from the same small town in Mexico. They were revolutionary because they flew completely under the radar. No guns, no violence. Just earning a buck to send home to mom and dad.
Ref: Dreamland by Sam Quinones
- I highly recommend the book Dreamland for more on this topic: https://www.amazon.com/Dreamland-True-Americas-Opiate-Epidem...
- These court-cases have two worthy objectives: Correcting this behavior in pharmaceutical co.s in the future and compensating the states & people harmed in the past.
Incentivizing restraint and honest advertising is only possible by punishing executives, personally [1]. Especially those in sales.
And fair compensation is many, many times this number. So I fail to see how this is anything other than an injustice, and fear that it will take the pressure off of other court cases against opioid sellers.
Reading the book "Dreamland" [2] on the opioid crisis changed my life. Even as someone from a part of Ohio hurt by opioids, it's hard to imagine the venality of these people, the callousness of the Mexican drug dealers who swoop in behind them, and the magnitude of suffering their perfect storm concocts.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19669453 [2] https://www.amazon.com/Dreamland-True-Americas-Opiate-Epidem...
