Dreamland : the true tale of America's new opiate epidemic
(Book - Regular Print)

"Featuring ... (or with ... ) a Mexican town, a drug company, a letter to the editor, pain doctors & pill mills, a true tale of drug marketing & the search for happiness in an age of Excess."

Includes bibliographical references and index.

With the same dramatic drive of El Narco and Methland, Sam Quinones weaves together two classic tales of American capitalism: The stories of young men in Mexico, independent of the drug cartels, in search of their own American Dream via the fast and enormous profits of trafficking cheap black-tar heroin to America's rural and suburban addicts; and that of Purdue Pharma in Stamford, Connecticut, determined to corner the market on pain with its new and expensive miracle drug, Oxycontin; extremely addictive in its own right. Quinones illuminates just how these two stories fit together as cause and effect: hooked on costly Oxycontin, American addicts were lured to much cheaper black tar heroin and its powerful and dangerous long-lasting high. Embroiled alongside the suppliers and buyers are DEA agents, local, small-town sheriffs, and the US attorney from eastern Virginia whose case against Purdue Pharma and Oxycontin made him an enemy of the Bush-era Justice Department, ultimately stalling and destroying his career in public service. Dreamland is a scathing and incendiary account of drug culture and addiction spreading to every part of the American landscape.

National Book Critics Circle Award for General Non-Fiction, 2015