MM#93--America's Forgotten Epidemic

Welcome to the theory to action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time to help you take action immediately, and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now, here's your host, David Kaiser.

Hello, I'm David and welcome back to another Mojo minute. And these brief audio essays, we make some humble suggestions on how to live and build a flourishing life. Now, today's Mojo minute will be vastly different. It will be a much longer Mojo minute, but I hope you will indulge me, it's an important topic. And there is much to cover in this topic, it will make you uncomfortable. And I thought about breaking it into two Mojo minutes. But some folks seem to like the longer format and have been asking me to go that route. And so we're going to take a stab at it with this episode. For the last two and a half years, we have had a pandemic in this country and worldwide that have COVID-19. And we'll certainly cover that in due time in this park on this podcast. But underneath all of that there has been a forgotten epidemic going on. It's been going on for some 20 years. It is the opioid epidemic. And it has ravaged many of our small and rural towns, as well as communities big and small and medium to big sized cities. There has been few books that have changed my mind so swiftly on a certain topic or issue than this book. 

And before I mentioned this book, my only suggestion is that you'll be as a listener that you would hope to understand. Understand these people understand that they are they are actually people. They're not simply statistics. They do have stories. And their stories have not been heard. And they need to be told. And I guess there is a second suggestion. I ask that you bring real recognition of this forgotten epidemic. Like I said that's existed for the last 20 years in America. Because sadly, our rolling elites don't want to mention it. They don't want to bring any attention to it. There's zero in depth reporting on this topic. And so it is with that, that I want to bring you this book, which I read, which I read back in 2019. 

And its title is Dreamland, the true tales, the true tale of America's opiate epidemic by Sam, Ken Jonas. And as always, let's go to the book for the opening quote. Drug overdoses were killing more people every year than car accidents. Auto fatalities had been the leading cause of accidental death for decades until this.

Now what now most of the fatal overdoses were from opiates, prescription painkillers or heroin. If death if deaths were the measurement, this wave of opiate abuse was the worst drug scourge to ever hit the country. This epidemic involved more users and far more death than the crack plague of the 1990s where the heroin plague in the 1970s. And it was happening very quietly, kids were dying in the Rust Belt of Ohio. The Bible Belt of Tennessee. Some of the worst was in Charlotte's Best Country Club enclaves. It was in Mission Viejo in Simi Valley, and in suburban Southern California, and in Indianapolis, Salt Lake Albuquerque in Oregon, Minnesota, and Oklahoma and Alabama. For each of the 1000s who died every year many hundreds were more addicted. Via pills heroin had entered the mainstream. The new addicts were football players and cheerleaders. Football was almost a gateway, opiate addiction. Wounded soldiers returning from Afghanistan, hooked on pain pills died in America. Kids got hooked in college and died there. Some of these addicts were from rough corners of rural Appalachia, but many more were from the US middle class. They lived in communities where the driveways were clean, the cars were new. And the shopping centers attracted congregations of Starbucks Home Depot, CVS, and Applebee's. They were the daughters of preachers, the son of cops and doctors, the children of contractors and teachers and business owners and bankers. And almost everyone was white children of the Most privilege group in the wealthiest country in the history of the world were getting hooked and dying an almost epidemic numbers from substances meant to of all things numb pain. What pain a South Carolina cop asked rhetorically one afternoon, as we toured the fine neighborhoods south of Charlotte, where he arrested kids for pills and heroin. Sorry, a North Carolina cop asked rhetorically crime was at historic lows yet, drug overdoses and the deaths of drug overdoses were at record highs. A happy facade covered a disturbing reality. Unquote. 

What pain indeed. As you know, I read a lot of books, I blow through a lot of books, I like to gather a lot of information. But this book will transform the way you look at our country, our ruling class and our media. And I highly recommend this book because it'll knock you on your butt. You can't believe this is happening. You can't believe big pharmaceutical corporations could do this. You can't believe the very little if any amount of reporting our legacy media is conducting on this. And I thank God for the author, Sam Communis. Because he did whatever reporters should be doing. Go ask questions of our fellow citizens of what is happening in and around our communities, find the stories find the news, find the people. Sam did that. Sam asked a lot of questions, good questions. And he took a lot of notes. Now by trade, Sam is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, he covers the regular crime beat for them. And this story took hold of him because he was reporting on the Mexican heroin trade. And he began to follow and connect the dots, like a good reporter should seek out the truth wherever you find it. It's a very well written and captivating book that shines a very bright light on a very dark piece of our country.

 And so I graduated myself, I graduated from a large suburban high school in Columbus, Ohio. In 1993, I went off to college and graduated in 1997, from a small private university in Northwest Ohio. And at the very same time to opiates, black tar heroin, and the other oxy cotton took off and increased dramatically in its use in the United States. And until this book, I never saw this part of America. And I'm in the middle class. And it was happening all around me. And I'm afraid you might be in the same position that I was before I read this book. In fact, America's middle class is being assaulted every day. black tar heroin is mostly produced in the Mexican state of Niger eat on the west side of Mexico. oxycontin is a legally prescribed is a legal prescribed painkiller. And Sam describes how very similar both of these drugs are. They're very similar quote on a molecular level level. Both are highly addictive, both elevate the user into a an incredible high and then follows by a deep dive into pain and sickness. Unquote. 

Quote like no other particle on Earth. The morphine molecules seem to possess Heaven and Hell, unquote. The amount of death these two drugs have caused in America's unforeseen and Dreamlands Title. Title the book comes from the name of a pool in Portsmouth Ohio, ground zero for the oxycontin first pill mill Now the pool was the center of all the town's activities from the 1930s, even to the 1980s. But then manufacturing began to turn south and Portsmouth. And by the early 90s, the pool and its town were declining very fast. Eventually the pool closed and it's now an Aldi grocery store. I will say and let me warn you when reading this book, that often I would have to stop the audio version while driving, just to pray for a family after hearing a tragic story, and what happened to them their child. It's devastating. And as an example, let's go back to the book. On New Year's Day 2013 I was in Covington, Kentucky, just outside Cincinnati. Beginning full time research on this book. The only place open for lunch was herbs and film has tavern a cozy darkened place for chili. Inside were a dozen members of family celebrating a girl's birthday. I sat in the corner eating and writing for an hour in the glow of college football games on TV and the neon Bavarian beer sign on the wall. I rose to leave when seeing the Berkeley sweatshirt I wore the grandmother in the group asked, you're not from around here are you? I told her I was from California. She asked why I was so far from home. I told her I was just beginning and research a book about heroin and prescription pill abuse. The party stopped the tavern hushed well pull up a chair she said after a pause. I have a story for you. Her name was Carol Wagner. Carol went on to tell me of her handsome college age college educated son Chad, who was prescribed oxy cotton for his carpal tunnel syndrome. He grew addicted. He never got unstuck. after that. He lost his home. He lost his family. And five years later, he lay dead of a heroin overdose in a Cincinnati halfway house. Carol's Daughter in law had a nephew who also died from heroin. Quote, I no longer judge drug addicts, Carol said. I no longer judge prostitutes, unquote.

So this book will knock you over many, many times like this story after story after story. So much death and so very, very young. of the deceased. Just complete tragedies. Imagine that to start with carpal tunnel syndrome, and then lay dead five years later because heroin just an unbelievable story. Now for the record, I've never taken a legal and illegal drug, not once. The just say no anti drug campaign in the 1980s was very effective for me. And I had great parents, which I think helps tremendously. I think especially strong fathers helps too. But sadly, you will see this opioid epidemic is not another just tragic tale about the drug underworld. It's very easy to dismiss like that. And that's perhaps the beauty. If you can say that of this book. This is a middle class issue. In fact, this might even be a rich class issue, wealthy class, to go from carpal tunnel syndrome, or a knee injury, to getting hooked on oxycodone or x oxy cotton. And then having to search out for black tar heroin is like I said, just unbelievable. No one is immune from this. And the fact that our ruling class just walks by story after story is another real tragedy. 

But let's get back to the book. And before we do ask for Carol and I agree. This changed my mind. After reading this book, it was a pivotal moment for me in my life. This book changed my complete thinking about drugs and those that suffer from them. And I agree with Carol, I can no longer judge drug addicts and I can no longer judge prostitutes. And you'll read of many, many, many parents in this book, and in fact you'll probably even read not read there there, you'll read of other's stories. And those stories who aren't shared of the parents who have gone broke paying for rehab and paying for the mini collect calls from jail. And these parents are shell shocked. They're anguished, and there'll be Willard. Now interspersed with the stories. Sam tells how it all happened, and how it keeps happening. And the overview is this. black tar heroin was transported by teenage boys known as the Jalisco boys. They wanted to build a better life in America. So they came in in the San Fernando Valley of California. 

And historically, heroin was moved by drug gangs and organized crime from Southeast Asian turkey into New York. And says one DEA agent, they distributed from their out to the rest of the country, most of the time, it was a very weak substance, a very weak drug, because it was over produced before hitting the street. Not so with black tar heroin. It was potent, quote, potent to the point of 80% Pure and cheap because of the of the distribution system unquote. Now oxycontin had a different route into the 1990s. Before 1980, the role for prescribing narcotic painkillers was as little as possible for a shorter period of time as possible. Then, one single paragraph in the New England Journal of Medicine changed the pharmaceutical industry. And it was taken completely out of context from a letter about opioids, or about opiates at the Boston hospital.

Sorry, at a Boston hospital, quote, only four had grown addicted and there is no data about how often how long or what dose these patients were given opiates for writes can Jonas in the book that sentence fueled in assault by drug makers to flood the market with their best painkillers. And thus doctors felt they could treat pain with opiates because they were nearly non addictive. And ironically, just them Purdue Pharma. The pharmaceutical company comes out with a time released painkiller oxycontin in 1996. Quote, The Doctors need not worry about oxycodone, the active ingredient and oxycontin was slowly released over many hours. Unquote. Listen to this, the numbers are staggering. 

Quote oxycontin prescriptions for chronic pain jumped from 670,019 97 to 6.2 million 6.2 million in 2002. Unquote. Holy smokes it has become known as quote, hillbilly heroin, unquote and it was pushed from everything from a sore knee to fibromyalgia. You what could have been a simple aspirin or a Tylenol was now treated with Oxycontin. Both drugs began overlapping all across the United States and in small towns and medium sized cities. The tragedy was starting to unfold. Now, finally in 2007, two dozen states attorney generals took the drug manufacturer Purdue pharma to court and won a $19.5 million settlement against them. Three executives pleaded guilty to federal charges of misbranding their drug oxycontin as less addictive than it really was. Now with oxycontin reformulated it helped it from being abused. But can una says everything was already set in place. 

Quote swollen population of OxyContin addicts were nationwide and without oxy. They switched book backed they switch to black tar heroin by the ever present Jalisco boys. Think of it like a fast food franchise. The informant said like a pizza delivery service. Each heroine, cell or franchise has its own owner in Jalisco. Neither eat who supplies the cell with heroin. The owner doesn't often come to the United States. He communicates only with the cell manager who lives in Denver and runs the business for him. Beneath the cell managers a telephone operator the informants said, the operator stays in apartment all day and takes calls. The calls come from addicts ordering their dope. Under the operator are several drivers paid a weekly wage and given housing and food. Their job is to drive the city with their mouths full of little uninflated balloons of black tar heroin 25 or 30 at a time and one mouth, they look like chipmunks. They have a bottle of water at the ready, so if please pull them over, they swig the water and swallow the balloons. The balloons remain intact in the body and are eliminated in the driver's waist. Apart from the balloons and their mouse, drivers keep another 100 hidden somewhere in the car. The operator's phone number is circulated among heroin addicts who call with their orders. The operators job the informants said is to tell them where to meet the driver, some suburban shopping center parking lot and McDonald's a Wendy's a CVS pharmacy. The operators relayed the message to the driver the informant said the driver swings by the parking lot and addicts pull up to follow him. Usually downside streets than the driver stops. The addict jumps into the car, the drivers car, they're in broken English and in broken Spanish. A cross cultural heroin deal is accomplished. The driver spitting out the balloons the addict needs and taking the cash. Drivers do this all day, the guy said
business hours 8am to 8pm. Usually, a cell of drivers at first can quickly gross $5,000 a day. Within a year, the cell can be clearing $15,000 daily. Let me repeat that. They can be clearing $15,000 daily, within a year. Unquote. 

Like a pizza delivery system. Just unbelievable. I'm shaking my head. So in today's Mojo minute, let us not judge the drug addicted with a prostitute or ruling class and our elites have simply ignored the most middle class, they have ignored most of the middle class. And they have ignored this epidemic that has been raging for the last 20 years. Even while COVID-19 which obviously is an extremely tragic tale about how our medical elites and our doctors just got it so wrong. And we'll talk about that eventually. But this epidemic has been going on before COVID-19. Much, much more before and no one is talking about it and no one's doing anything about it. So I urge you to get this book understand what's happening in our mayor in our country. Dreamland is the title. It's a tragic, tragic tale. Very sad tale of America and her Heartland for the last 20 years. Again, it's on Audible. I urge you to listen to it or read it. It's certainly well worth your time. And I hope in listening to this brief book review you have come out better for it. Thank you for listening.

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