DREAMLAND – The Online Bibliography
Much of the research for DREAMLAND was done online. I consulted studies in PDF form, Youtube videos, government websites and industry trade publications.
It seemed pointless to list these and their sometimes quite lengthy links in the book itself, where no one could link them. So I’ve put them here, where readers can view with one click the study or report in question.
I checked all the links before posting them. Sometimes, of course, links or websites are removed from the Internet. Please let me know if you find that one of the links I list here is no longer working. I can be reached at samquinones7@yahoo.com.
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Certain government agencies have produced numerous studies relevant to the prescription-painkiller abuse problem.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is foremost among them, with among other things, this 2014 overdose fact sheet, this report on deaths from 1999-2006, this 2013 presentation by then-CDC official Chris Jones, this report on methadone abuse from 2012. In 2011, the agency published this factsheet.
The federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) publishes a survey on drug use that is very helpful. Here’s its National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) for 2012. The number of people using crack at the height of that epidemic is discussed in various SAMHSA surveys going back several years, as well as this online report. SAMHSA also published this 2010 assessment of methadone mortality rates.
The U.S. General Accounting Office (now Government Accountability Office) produced the enormously helpful 2003 study on Purdue Pharma and its campaign to promote OxyContin, which is well worth reading. I also consulted the office’s study in 2009 of methadone deaths, and its 1990 report on methadone-maintenance clinics.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse published this report in 2011 estimating addiction resulting from treatment for chronic pain at between three and 40 percent.
Medical journals also provided important information:
The Journal of Pain and Palliative Care Pharmacotherapy ran this 2001 survey on the widespread under-treatment of pain.
Thirteen years later, The American Journal of Public Health ran this editorial by several doctors insisting that widespread abuse of opiates was due in part to physicians’ overprescribing the medications.
JAMA Psychiatry ran this on the changing nature of the heroin addict in 2014.
Meanwhile, Pain Physician ran this 2012 description of the opiate abuse epidemic.
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Numerous books and studies detail the Harrison Narcotic Act of 2014 and its effects over the next 20 years. Consumer Reports ran this very helpful report in 1972.
A history of Committee on Problems of Drug Dependence was published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence in 1989, written by Everett May and Arthur Jacobson.
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The Letter to the Editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, published on Jan. 12, 1980, and authored by Jane Porter and Dr. Hershel Jick can be read here.
The letter was mostly promoted as evidence of the low risk of addiction to opiate painkillers in speeches by pain specialists and nurses at numerous conventions, seminars, continuing medical education workshops. However, among the printed citations exalting the letter’s findings were the following:
Canadian Family Physician published this 1995 article that referred to Porter and Jick as “persuasive.” The same author, Ronald Melzack, referred to Porter and Jick as “an extensive study” in this 1990 article in Scientific American.
A Time Magazine story from 2001 – “Less Pain, More Gain” – referred to the letter, without naming its authors, as a “landmark study.”
The 2007 textbook Complications in Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine referred to Porter and Jick as “a landmark report.”
This 2012 slideshow by Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing offers an overview of the epidemic, while noting that Porter and Jick had been cited 693 times by then in Google Scholar.
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PURDUE PHARMA
Several online sources helped me piece together the history of Purdue Pharma and its promotion of OxyContin:
Here’s the company’s historical timeline and that of its products. In 2003, the GAO published a report on Purdue Pharma and its campaign to promote OxyContin. Florida’s Sun-Sentinel newspaper ran this story on OxyContin, quoting former sales manager William Gergely. Fortune Magazine reported Purdue sales for 2010, among other things. The company announced it will be producing an extended-release hydrocodone pill.
Pro Publica, the nonprofit investigative journalism foundation, has extensive reporting on the financial ties between medical societies and foundations and drug manufacturers, in a series it called Dollars For Doctors. Among the stories is this one co-published with USA Today.
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The story of the pharmaceutical industry’s sales-rep arms race that began in the 1990s is a fascinating one and intimately connected to my story in Dreamland.
I learned much of it from talking to salespeople. But there are many stories in the general press, as well as trade publications, on the rise and demise of this arms race. Quoting the shakiness of the large-salesforce business model is this story in Mult-Sclerosis.org; reporting on the layoffs in the industry by 2014 is this piece in Pharmaceutical Executive; this one in Medical Marketing & Media in 2007; this 2014 analysis by Mizuho; and this 2014 story by Pharmaceutical Commerce. The New York Times and Business Week also wrote about Pfizer, as the industry leader cut back.
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Among the online sources I used on the remarkable career of Dr. Arthur Sackler were his biographical webpage, his biography in the Medical Advertising Hall of Fame, an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, and his obituary in the New York Times, and this on his art collecting, this 1986 story in the International Herald Tribune. The Los Angeles Times ran this 2010 obituary on his brother, and co-owner of Purdue, Mortimer Sackler.
A discussion of Terramycin’s sales figures is in the book, Seven Lifesaving Drugs and the People Who Created Them by Robert Shook, which I consulted online.
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The Pain Policy and Studies Group at the University of Wisconsin has done volumes of work on the consumption of morphine worldwide.
This chart from the PPSG chronicles the rise is morphine consumption and the consumption of opiates worldwide. This chart measures the growth of the use in the United States from 1980-2013. Among the countries with the lowest consumption of opiates is India, where much of the world’s opium supply originates.
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I gleaned details of the life and career of Dr. Russell Portenoy from an oral history at The John C. Liebeskind History of Pain Collection at UCLA. (The official sourcing: Oral History Interview with Russell K. Portenoy, 17-18 April 2003 (Ms. Coll. no. 127.67), John C. Liebeskind History of Pain Collection, History & Special Collections for the Sciences, UCLA Library Special Collections, Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library, University of California, Los Angeles.)
I used also information from this 2008 article in the Journal of Palliative Medicine; his thoughts about pain and prescription painkillers in this 1996 article in Journal of Law Medicine and Ethics, his discussion of pain and chronic pain in 2009. His financial relationship to Purdue Pharma are disclosed here, and here, among other places. In this video on the PROP website, he acknowledges that he would have said, done, things differently had he known what was about to.
CHECK LINKThe Pain Research Forum ran this interview with Dr. Kathleen Foley. I also drew from her oral history on file at UCLA’s Liebeskind Collection, cited above.
The concept of pseudoaddiction is discussed in this 1989 article in Pain Journal by Drs. David Haddox and David E. Weisman, and by Weisman in this article for the Center for Advanced Palliative Care.
The history of the Wong-Baker FACES pain assessment can be found here. A history of the Press Ganey scores is here.
Among the online sources on the life of Dr. John Bonica is a 1977 profile in People Magazine, and his 1994 obituary in the Seattle Times. Here is a short history of the American Pain Society, of which Bonica was the first chairman. The APS approach to the Assessment of Pain is here.
Pain as the “fifth vital sign” is discussed in many places, including this 2000 Department of Veterans Affairs report, which quotes Dr. James Campbell, and this in Federal Practitioner from 2010 as well.
How much time, on average, primary-care physicians spend with their patients is discussed here, and here, and here. This Newsweek story in 2012 reported on managed care leading to shorter doctor visits and more patient dissatisfaction. Two studies on how to improve primary care are here and here. The need for more primary care doctors is discussed here and here.
The decline of multidisciplinary pain clinics is discussed in this article in Practical Pain Management by Dr. Michael Schatman.
The Veterans Affairs’ Opioid Safety Initiative, a response to widespread painkiller abuse and addiction, is discussed here and here and here.
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Information on the collegiate recovery movement, which has gained great momentum from the increase in opiate addiction on many campuses, is available at www.RecoveryCampus.com. This story is about efforts to promote addiction recovery at the University of Alabama, which opened its recovery campus, including sober tailgate parties, in 2012.
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For more on the intractable pain laws that states began to pass in the late 1990s, there is this in Medscape detailing how different states address the issue of opiate prescribing, and the regulations each has in place. There’s also this in 2001 in the Western Journal of Medicine that, among other things, discusses California’s AB 791.
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OHIO
Columbus as the new test-market town is discussed in Nation’s Restaurant News and Business Insider and on CBS and on National Public Radio.
In 2012, the Cleveland Plain Dealer chronicled the story of Chris Jacquemain and the University of Akron Zips 2009 football team.
Most of the information about the late Dr. Phil Prior I obtained from friends and family. However, I’d be remiss not to include this article about his amateur rocketry, though it was Greek to me.
DR. DAVID PROCTER
Information on Dr. David Procter came from many people in Portsmouth who knew him and used him as their doctor.
Kentucky’s Board of Medical Licensure investigated Procter and issued this graphic 63-page report in 2000 on his medical practices. The agency produced similar investigations into at least four of the doctors Procter hired to help him run his South Shore clinic after his auto accident: Dr. Rodolfo Santos, Dr. Frederick Cohn, Dr. Fortune Williams and Dr. Steven Snyder.
Online, the Lexington Herald-Leader ran this excellent report in 2003 on the pill problem in Eastern Kentucky, devoting space to Procter and his legacy. That same year, Procter testified against one of his ex-employees, Dr. Rodolfo Santos.
Here is Procter’s 2014 email to me requesting money for an interview – a request I declined.
PORTSMOUTH
As I was researching Portsmouth, this Daily Times article in 2013 detailed the latest statistics on drug deaths in Scioto County
Some of the history of Portsmouth, Ohio, can be found here.
For material on Dreamland, the legendary swimming pool in Portsmouth, I drew from a Facebook shout-out to members of the town’s diapora, which unfortunately I cannot link to here for privacy reasons.
A letter on Dreamland’s integration in the Portsmouth High School alumni newsletter can be found here; and here’s a podcast on the same topic from 2012.
Here’s a chatroom of people reminiscing about the swimming pool.
Finally, not to be missed are clips of family movies taken at the pool and used many years later in a music video by country singer, Rick Ferrell, for his song about the pool, titled “Dreamland.”
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There is a growing amount of information on the topic of drug courts and the use of specialty dockets as alternatives to incarceration for addicts. This 2013 story in the Wall Street Journal was very helpful. The Associated Press ran a story on the use of drug courts in Ohio in 2012. The Toledo Blade published this interview with the Ohio director of prisons urging more rehabilitation and no new prisons. In Massachusetts, the scourge of opiate abuse led officials to call for more drug courts, as reported in the Boston Globe in 2014.
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WASHINGTON
The state Labor & Industry’s opioid prescription guidelines, issued in 2010 can be found here. The lawsuit I refer to filed by Dr. Merle Janes, with five law firms, can be viewed here.
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Watch this 44-minute documentary on the Azusa Street Pentecostal revival in the early 1900s. Among its converts were Russian immigrants who returned home to preach the gospel and created the first communities of Russian Pentecostals just as the Soviet Union was taking shape.
This is a 2009 review of a short history of the Slavic Pentecostal movement. An interesting blogpost on the most important Slavic Pentecostal churches in the United States. See more about God Will Provide, the rehab church, at www.gwprovide.org.
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MEXICO
There are many books on the drug war and the history of Mexico’s drug cartels that provide context for my book, though I’ve not quoted them.
One is The Drug Connection in U.S.-Mexico Relations edited by Guadalupe Gonzalez and Marta Tienda, Center of US-Mexican Studies, UC San Diego, 1989. Chapter 3, by Miguel Ruiz-Cabanas discusses Mexico’s opium supply with figures for eradication. Richard Craig’s chapter discusses the history of U.S. narcotics policy regarding Mexico.
El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Conspiracy by Ioan Grillo is another.
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XALISCO, NAYARIT and BLACK TAR HEROIN
Much of what I learned about Xalisco, Nayarit came from interviews with narcotics agents, police, prosecutors, and, especially, young men from the town, most of whom had been involved in selling black-tar heroin in the United States.
However, some of what I learned I found online.
A map of the municipio (similar to a U.S. county) of Xalisco, Nayarit.
Listen to the corrido (in Spanish) of David Tejeda here. And the corrido to Tono Raices here.
Listen to “El Numero Uno” by Los Incomparables de Tijuana – Enrique’s favorite corrido.
The DEA/FBI joint Operation Tar Pit in 2000 was covered in a variety of media, from Honolulu to CNN, and in this U.S. Department of Justice press release.
The Honolulu Star-Bulletin ran this story on the killing of two brothers, Armando and Arturo Renteria-Hernandez, who were heroin traffickers from Xalisco, and then again in this brief story.
The death in Xalisco of Jose Luis Estrada Martinez, “El Pepino,” in Xalisco is reported here.
Following my series on the Xalisco Boys in the L.A. Times, there were several reports on the march of black-tar heroin east across the U.S. Among them, a study by the Wilson Center by Jose Diaz-Briseno. Several newspapers began to note the emergence of heroin in their areas where the drug had been only a minor issue, if it existed at all. The Cincinnati Inquirer ran this report in 2013.
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With the death of actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman, articles on the increase in heroin use and overdose deaths appeared in many states, among them Minnesota, Utah, West Virginia, Alabama, Maryland, upstate New York, Wisconsin. Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin devoted his entire state of the state speech to heroin addiction.U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder called heroin addiction an “urgent and growing public health crisis.”
19 Comments
Hello Mr Quinones,
Your book fatefully landed in my hands recently by my preceptor who is a NP. I am currently focusing my thesis and project on the opioid crisis and wanted to get your permission to use some of your book in my evidence based project (with citing of course) that is a small but important piece, using non-pharmacologic modalities to address pain. I appreciate all the work you put into this book and tell everyone in medicine to read it.
Thank you!
Nell
sorry, just now seeing this, as i’ve been swamped with finishing my next book….can you contact me at samquinones7@yahoo.com?
I am a Registered Nurse in Northeast Ohio. One of my newest patients is a lifelong resident of Portsmouth and just moved to be closer to her son. She was the person who told me about Dr. Procter and the pill mill origin. Her son also gave me the name of your book. I am fascinated and somewhat embarrassed that I did not know this before.
I was a newer nurse when the OxyContin prescribing started to be excessive. My husband was a detective at the time and worked tirelessly with the State Board of Pharmacy to make doctor’s offices accountable for over prescribing and not running OARRS reports on patients they prescribed Schedule 1-4 narcotics to. So far, I’ve spent many hours online looking at the stories and have asked my kids to get me the book for Christmas (they say I never give them good gift ideas so I’m holding out until next month). Your research was excellent. I’m surprised to find that at least 3 of the doctors prosecuted from the Procter pill mill are now practicing physicians.
Well done, sir.
megan — so sorry, i’m just now seeing this. i was swamped with my next book, which is about fentanyl and meth, and community endurance….thanks so much for your kind comment….i hope your kids got you Dreamland for Christmas and that you found it worthwhile….sam quinones
[…] Comments from Sam Quinones’ website, Dreamland – Online Bibliography: […]
I just read your book, Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic, and wanted to let you now what a brutally informative read it was for me. Sadly, I like so many other parents can relate to this topic. My 27 year old son is a recovering heroin addict. Unlike a lot of the population that got addicted on the pain meds and turned to heroin, my son made the choice (at the age of 16) to try heroin…and loved it.
It is mind boggling to me that so many of my coworkers, friends and relatives are experiencing this same issue. Dear friends of mine just lost their daughter in March to a heroin overdose and lost their son last July to a methadone overdose. Another friend of mine has two sons addicted to heroin.
After four overdoses (first three occurred within eight month time frame), infection from dirty needles, stealing, lost jobs, wrecked vehicles, kicked out of our home at 19 (while homeless in Hollywood National Geographic interviewed him and other kids for a documentary), multiple rehab stints and a few incarcerations, miraculously my son is still alive. I count myself as one of the lucky ones. Our family has learned to take it one day at a time.
Sam,
Thank you for your book. Your description of the operation and delivery system of black tar heroin in the Pacific Northwest was spot on. As a recovering heroin addict who lived in Portland, OR, Seattle, WA in the 90’s, I spent countless hours on St. corners and in the back of non descript 1980s American made 4 door sedans buying balloons of heroin (and cocaine for that matter, as speedballs were my preference). I used to marvel how I would run into the very same runners/drivers in different towns up and down the west coast.
Another closely related and similar story is the Honduran crack trade on the West Coast (and possibly elsewhere) the used young boys but rather than cars they held corners in cities up and down the west coast, I would see the same kids (as young as 12 or 13 years old in SF and Portland and Seattle.
Again thank you for the accurate and important story, you gave us a voice.
Cheers,
Kerry
Sounds like you were right in the middle of the storm as it was forming….If you’d like to write up some of your experiences, I try to publish them on my blog. let me know….Sam
[…] story behind the letter was documented extensively by journalist Sam Quinones in his 2015 book “Dreamland,” an account of the opioid crisis in the United States. According to Quinones, the letter seemed […]
[…] story behind the letter was documented extensively by journalist Sam Quinones in his 2015 book “Dreamland,” an account of the opioid crisis in the United […]
[…] story behind the letter was documented extensively by journalist Sam Quinones in his 2015 book “Dreamland,” an account of the opioid crisis in the United […]
[…] story behind the letter was documented extensively by journalist Sam Quinones in his 2015 book “Dreamland,” an account of the opioid crisis in the United […]
Not seeing you cited here.
http://www.businessinsider.com/1980-letter-that-helped-launch-the-opioid-crisis-2017-6
I may be doing something wrong here but I am unable to link to the resources online. I understand not having the references inside the book but I was hoping to find a much larger bibliography.
” Thirteen years later, The American Journal of Public Health ran this editorial by several doctors insisting that widespread abuse of opiates was due in part to physicians’ overprescribing the medications.” This leads to a dead link and a 404 page not found error.
” The Letter to the Editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, published on Jan. 12, 1980, and authored by Jane Porter and Dr. Hershel Jick can be read here.” Unfortunately, there appears to be no hyperlink.
It would be really great to have links to Jennifer Sabel, Jaymie Mai, and other authorities quoted in the book so that the reader can find the appropriate references.
Working on it!
What would you say to HS students about the use of narcotics? What could teachers say to keep students safe?
Thank you for writing this book. It helped me see the bigger picture and helped me realize how this addiction spread so fast and hard. When my son began abusing alcohol and drugs my husband and I were so unaware of what was happening. He would seem to recover and then fall back. Not until he was arrested and jailed did we realize how serious it was. We began reading about opiate addiction but answers were hard to find. After a decade of addiction, including a third long term spell in treatment, he is in recovery and working at the recovery center he attended. He has been clean for two plus years and is studying for a degree in social work. Our story is one of hope, but we have neighbors who have lost sons forever. Treatment that was hard to find several years ago now is available thanks to money from the settlement won by our former attorney general. I wish all white middle and upper class parents understood that this can happen to any of their bright well educated children, because it has. We are not in Eastern Kentucky, but our drug treatment center has plenty of people from there. I have noticed doctors and dentists prescribe fewer pills for pain relief now, which is good. However the new drug of choice is heroin and overdoses are too common from the news reports I see. I wish there was a way to convince kids not to get started on opiates.
“This problem began with a revolution in how we thought about pain in America. A way of thinking took over… that we were a country in pain and we had to aggressively treat that pain,” he remarked. “All across the country we began prescribing pills for things that had never received a prescription before — and in massive quantities — while believing the whole time that these pills were non-addictive.”
I remember this, though it was long ago. Glad to see somebody else does. As a personal experience, the last time I broke a bone, my sister in-law asked me to get “pain pills” from the doctor if he asked me about the pain. I was a bit clueless at the time, but sure enough he asked me if I needed something for the pain. He seemed very apprehensive about it, and I wondered how my sister in-law knew he would ask. I told him if Ibuprofen didn’t work, I could live with it. He seemed very relieved, and my sister in-law very disappointed that I hadn’t received anything. Of course I realised later that she (and many more people I know) are addicted to these things. Are doctors required to ask this now?
Just finished reading DREAMLAND. It was well worth the time. I learned much about the black-tar heroin and the history of oxycontin. The book should be read by everyone who is involved in this public health epidemic, which is only getting worse. As a representative for Coroners who see the death at the front lines of this issue, the problem of substance abuse is not diminishing even with all the public attention to the issue. We need to develop real solutions by reinvigorating our churches, our communities and our families. Hope has to be keystone of our lives — hope for a job, hope for a family, hope for participation in an all inclusive society. In other words, as the book concludes, it is essential that everyone’s vision of their Dreamland become a reality again.