Sam Quinones on Heroin, the Opioid Epidemic, and Dreamland

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4.7 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 23 January 2017

⏱️ 70 minutes

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Summary

How did heroin spread beyond big cities in America? What's the connection between heroin and America's opioid problem? Sam Quinones, author of Dreamland, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the explosion in heroin use and how one small Mexican town changed how heroin was produced and sold in America. That in turn became entangled with the growth in the use of pain-killers as recreational drugs. Drawing on the investigative reporting that culminated in his book, Quinones lays out the recent history and economics of the growth in heroin and pain-killer usage and the lost lives along the way.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:09.3	I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
0:13.8	Our website is econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this podcast, and find
0:18.9	links and other information related to today's conversation.
0:21.7	You'll also find our archives where you can listen to every episode we've ever done going
0:26.1	back to 2006.
0:28.3	Our email address is mailadycontalk.org.
0:30.8	We'd love to hear from you.
0:34.7	Today is December 12, 2016.
0:36.7	I want to remind listeners to go to econtalk.org where you'll find a link.
0:41.0	And the upper left hand corner to this year's annual survey of your favorite episodes.
0:45.2	Now for today's guest, author and journalist Sam Quannonis, his latest book is Dreamland,
0:50.9	the true tale of America's opiate epidemic, which is our topic for today's conversation,
0:56.2	Sam.
0:57.2	Welcome to econtalk.
0:58.2	How do you want to be here, Russ?
0:59.2	How are you doing?
1:00.2	Doing great.
1:01.2	Especially after reading your book, more or less.
1:04.9	Dreamland is one of the best nonfiction books I have read in a long, long time.
1:09.0	I couldn't put it down.
1:11.2	It was deeply disturbing in many ways, but incredibly illuminating about an issue that we have
	...

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