Book review of Dreamland: the truth tale of America’s opiate epidemic by Sam Quinones

Abstract

In the United States, the abuse of opioid-type analgesics, such as OxyContin or Vicodin, becomes a real plague among young people at the turn of the 20th/21st century. Long-term use or abuse of legal prescription drugs increases the body's tolerance and thus drives young people to try stronger opiates – primarily heroin. Doctors, parents, children – no one expects that they will all be responsible for starting the largest drug scourge in the American history. At critical time more deaths are caused by drug overdose than by road accidents. All social groups quickly become addicted, including those who have previously had at best a marginal problem – “children from good homes”. They die with a syringe stuck in their hand in their parents’ new cars or in their beautiful, spacious rooms. As the author points out, “The children of the most privileged social group in the richest country in the history of the world have become addicted and are dying on an almost epidemic scale from the pills that were primarily meant to relieve pain”. Many years pass before parents begin to notice their children’s mistakes, and before doctors admit to erroneous thinking about the non-addictive nature of the deceptive molecule of morphine. No epidemic has so far been accompanied by such a deafening silence.