Sam Quinones: At the Expense of Community

SundayReview | Opinion
Guns and Opioids Are American Scourges Fueled by Availability

By SAM QUINONES FEB. 24, 2018

The United States is in the midst of at least two plagues with much in common.

One is gun-fueled mass murder; the other is addiction to opioids — pain pills, heroin, fentanyl.

Both are uniquely American afflictions, killing in alarming numbers. Both are revved in part by commercial interests and in part by the collapse of community in American culture. Both persist because of the erroneous belief that there’s an easy answer to these complicated problems.

Above all, both are about supply.

Laid on top of a culture of increasing social isolation for many, our vast supply of easily accessible opioids has sent overdose deaths skyrocketing. So, too, a vast supply of easily accessible guns has produced a similarly rising death toll.

I wrote a book about our opioid-addiction epidemic. I first thought the book was about drug marketing — both from pharmaceutical companies and from Mexican heroin traffickers. But it was bigger than that; it was about who we were as Americans. The root of the scourge, I believe, is in isolation and a conviction that we are entitled to a life free of pain — all of which forms heroin’s natural habitat.

We exalted the private, the individual, at the expense of community.

Sam Quinones is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles and the author of “Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic.”

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