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 January 2000, law enforcement at the federal and local levels, including Paul “Rock” Stone from Portland and Jim Kuykendall from Albuquerque, convene in the Los Angeles DEA office to compare notes on heroin cases across the U.S. These cases once seemed separate, but now law enforcement realizes that they are connected—something Ed Ruplinger had suspected years before. The January meeting is called “Operation Tar Pit,” and it establishes, once and for all, that the Xalisco Boys are a national operation. Rock Stone recalls that, “You couldn’t help but feel how corporate these guys are, how standardized they are. It’s like McDonald’s, where you get the same burger in Louisiana as you get in California.” Each cell is like a franchise, and each can be traced back to Xalisco.
Law enforcement continues to connect the dots to see the full extent of the intricately connected Xalisco Boys distribution system. Operation Tar Pit is established to target Xalisco heroin networks.Comparing the Xalisco Boys to McDonald’s shows how their success was built on marketing a consistent, recognizable brand. One might compare this to the tactics employed by pharmaceutical companies to sell “blockbuster drugs” like OxyContin.
Themes
