Dreamland
Authors: Sam Quinones
To my girls
Contents
The Xalisco Boys Heroin Cells in the United States
Xalisco County in Nayarit, Mexico
Bodies Are the Key to the Case
Two-
Thousand-Year-Old Questions
“Took Over the OxyContin Belt”
Pentecostal Piety, Fierce Scratches
“We Was Carrying the Epidemic”
Great Time to Be a Heroin Dealer
The Xalisco Boys Heroin Cells in the United States
U.S. cities where the traffickers from Xalisco, Nayarit, have heroin cells (stars) or have at one time had cells working (dots). In most cases, the market for their black tar heroin stretches far beyond each city, sometimes for hundreds of miles.
Xalisco County in Nayarit, Mexico
A word on terminology: I have used the term “opiate” throughout this book to describe drugs like morphine and heroin, which derive directly from the opium poppy, and others that derive indirectly, or are synthesized from drugs derived, from the poppy and resemble morphine in their effects. These derivative drugs are often described as opioids. But I felt that going back and forth between the two terms throughout the book would confuse the lay reader.
1804: Morphine is distilled from opium for the first time.
1839: First Opium War breaks out as Britain forces China to sell its India-grown opium, and the British take Hong Kong. A second war erupts in 1957.
1853: The hypodermic syringe is invented. Inventor’s wife is first to die of injected drug overdose.
1898: Bayer chemist invents diacetylmorphine, names it heroin.
1914: U.S. Congress passes Harrison Narcotics Tax Act.
1928: What eventually becomes known as the Committee on the Problems of Drug Dependence forms to organize research in pursuit of the Holy Grail: a nonaddictive painkiller.
1935: The Narcotic Farm in Lexington, Kentucky, opens as federal prison/drug rehabilitation and research center.
1951: Arthur Sackler revolutionizes drug advertising with campaign for antibiotic Terramycin.
1952: Arthur, Raymond, and Mortimer Sackler buy Purdue Frederick.
1960: Arthur Sackler’s campaign for Valium makes it the industry’s first $100 million drug.
1974: The Narcotic Farm closes and is transformed into a medical center and prison.
1980: Jan Stjernsward made chief of the cancer program for the World Health Organization. Devises WHO Ladder of pain treatment.
1980: The
New England Journal of Medicine
publishes letter to editor that becomes known as Porter and Jick.
Early 1980s: First Xalisco migrants set up heroin trafficking businesses in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles.
1984: Purdue releases MS Contin, a timed-release morphine painkiller marketed to cancer patients.
1986: Drs. Kathleen Foley and Russell Portenoy publish paper in the journal
Pain
, opening a debate about use of opiate painkillers for wider variety of pain.
1987: Arthur Sackler dies, having revolutionized pharmaceutical advertising.
Early 1990s: Xalisco Boys heroin cells begin expanding beyond San Fernando Valley to cities across western United States. Their pizza-delivery-style system evolves.
1996: Purdue releases OxyContin, timed-released oxycodone, marketed largely for chronic-pain patients.
1996: Dr. David Procter’s clinic in South Shore, Kentucky, is presumed the nation’s first pill mill.
1996: President of American Pain Society urges doctors to treat pain as a vital sign.
1998: “The Man” takes Xalisco black tar heroin east across the Mississippi River for the first time, lands in Columbus, Ohio.
1998: In Portsmouth, Ohio, Dr. David Procter has an auto accident that leaves him unable to practice medicine but still capable of running a pain clinic. He hires doctors who go on to open clinics.
Late 1990s: Xalisco Boys heroin cells begin to spread to numerous cities and suburbs east of the Mississippi River.
1998–99: Veterans Administration and JCAHO adopt idea of pain as fifth vital sign.
2000: Operation Tar Pit targets Xalisco heroin networks—the largest joint DEA/FBI operation and first drug conspiracy case to stretch from coast to coast.
2001: Injured workers covered under Washington State’s workers’ comp system start dying of opiate overdoses.
2002: Dr. David Procter pleads guilty to drug trafficking and conspiracy and serves eleven years in federal prison.
2004: Washington State Department of Labor & Industries Drs. Gary Franklin and Jaymie Mai publish findings on deaths of injured workers due to overdoses on opiate painkillers.
Mid-2000s: Xalisco black tar heroin cells are now in at least seventeen states. Portsmouth, Ohio, has more pill mills per capita than any U.S. town. Florida’s lax regulations make it another center of illicit pill supply.
2006: Operation Black Gold Rush, a second DEA operation targeting Xalisco heroin cells across the country.
2007: Purdue and three executives plead guilty to misdemeanor charges of false branding of OxyContin; fined $634 million.
2008: Drug overdoses, mostly from opiates, surpass auto fatalities as leading cause of accidental death in the United States.
2010: Drug violence between Los Zetas and Sinaloa cartels spreads to Xalisco, Nayarit.
2011: Ohio passes House Bill 93, regulating pain clinics.
2013: The College on the Problems of Drug Dependence turns seventy-five without finding the Holy Grail of a nonaddictive painkiller.
2014: Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman dies, focusing widespread attention for the first time on the United States’ opiate-abuse epidemic and the transition from pills to heroin in particular.
2014: The FDA approves Zohydro, a timed-release hydrocodone painkiller with no abuse deterrent. It also approves Purdue’s Targiniq ER, combining timed-release oxycodone with naloxone, the opiate-overdose antidote.
In 1929, three decades into what were the great years for the blue-collar town of Portsmouth, on the Ohio River, a private swimming pool opened and they called it Dreamland.