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Part 1: The Molecule
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Dreamland, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Pain Management and the Normalization of Narcotics
The Drug Business
Stigma, Shame, and the Opiate Epidemic
Community as a Remedy to Addiction
Summary
Analysis
In 1979, Dennis Chavez is employed with the Denver Police Department. As Chavez arrests more drug traffickers, he learns that the city’s heroin is being supplied by men from Nayarit. The Nayarits sell black tar heroin, which is unlike the brown powder Chavez is used to seeing. In 1995, Chavez joins the Denver PD’s narcotics unit, where he makes a connection with an informant who is involved with the Mexican heroin trade. Chavez tracks the heroin trade as it Nayarit dealers move from walking around the streets to driving around the city, delivering their heroin out of cars. Chavez learns that all these men are from the same town, Xalisco, and he attributes their success to “a system of selling heroin retail,” depending “on cheap, illegal Mexican labor,” much like a fast-food restaurant.
Attributing the heroin traffickers’ success to “a system of selling heroin retail,” and their reliance “on cheap, illegal Mexican labor” like a fast-food restaurant aligns their system with legitimate businesses. This speaks to Quinones’s position that the opiate epidemic was driven by the economic motivations of businessmen—whether they be illegitimate, like the Xalisco Boys, or legitimate, like Arthur Sackler.
Themes
Chavez tells Quinones that according to his informant, the heroin system operates like a “franchise.” Each cell is owned by someone in Xalisco, who supplies the heroin. A cell manager lives in the states, takes calls from addicts, and sends drivers out to deliver the heroin. Drivers are paid a weekly wage and provided food and lodging. They drive around the city all day, their mouths stuffed with uninflated balloons of heroin, which they are prepared to swallow, should they be approached by a cop.
Again, the Xalisco Boys are frequently described as operating as “franchises,” emphasizing the business sensibilities operating at the core of their heroin distribution system. The fact that drivers are paid salaries further emphasizes the conventional business practices the distribution system adheres to.
Themes
Because cells don’t compete with other cells, the price of heroin stays low. Traffickers lay low, spending only a few months in a city before they are sent home or transferred to another city. These cells “run like small businesses, keeping track of all expenses, and offering “special deals” to addicts. Selling heroin in small amounts makes good business sense, as heroin is in constant demand for addicts, and cell profits are “based on the markup inherent in retail.” Chavez considers the innovations of the Xalisco cells to have as much impact as “those in the legitimate business world.” The Xalisco traffickers seized on the desire of their clientele—mostly white, middle-class kids—for convenience, and turned drug dealing into a delivery service. The system spread, with Xalisco traffickers targeting a dozen cities in the Western US. Chavez tells Quinones that he calls these traffickers “Xalisco Boys.”
Again, the cells are explicitly compared to “small businesses.” Quinones emphasizes the precision with which cells monitor “all expenses” to create a parallel between the financial operations of illegitimate drug businesses like the Xalisco Boys and legitimate drug businesses like Pfizer or Purdue Pharma. Just like pharmaceutical companies offered “special deals” or free samples to doctors, the Xalisco Boys offer “special deals” to build new, reliable markets of addict customers. Just like Purdue offered OxyContin as an answer to the medical industry and the American culture’s desire for a simple, efficient solution to pain, the Xalisco Boys offer a heroin delivery service as a solution to the new, middle-class market of users that is so used to convenience and instant gratification.
Themes
