Dealers and Doctors in 'Dreamland': The True Cause of America's Opioid Epidemic Mason Alexander Jacobs College

Sam Quinones’ Dreamland uncovers the misguided values and cultural ideals of America and explores how those values manifested themselves in the medical and pharmaceutical industries unleashing the current opioid crisis America currently finds itself in. Quinones pieces together the evolution of the country’s relationship with the morphine molecule and shows how that relationship changed as a consequence of its commercial and recreational use. He ties together the influence of the medical industry, pharmaceutical industry, and illicit drug market to reveal a broken system fueled by profit that caused a chain reaction resulting in an addiction problem unlike any other before seen in the US. Ultimately Quinones shows that drugs have been a part of our society for years and will continue to be for years to come and that when the institutions set in place to control the relationship between drugs and society are misguided it produces extreme consequences for the rest of the population. That is to make a larger point that the focus of institutions like the medical industry is to solve the underlying issues of the problems we face, not treat the effects for profit.

Quinones continually draws on a shift in opinion on opioids role in...