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Mar 13, 2018

Join us to hear the highly acclaimed journalist Sam Quinones, author of Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic. In his book Quinones weaves together two classic tales of capitalism run amok whose unintentional collision has been catastrophic. The unfettered prescribing of pain medications during the 1990s reached its peak in Purdue Pharma’s campaign to market OxyContin, its new, expensive—and extremely addictive—miracle painkiller. Meanwhile a massive influx of black tar heroin—cheap, potent, and originating from one small county on Mexico’s west coast, independent of any drug cartel—assaulted small towns and midsized cities across the country, driven by a brilliant, almost unbeatable marketing and distribution system. Together these phenomena continue to lay waste to communities from Tennessee to Oregon, Indiana to New Mexico. Dreamland is a revelatory account of the corrosive threat facing America and its heartland.

 

This program is brought to Rotary by the generosity of the Zilber Family Foundation.