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 August 2001, John Brownlee, a Republican, becomes the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia. It is during this time that Jaymie Mai uncovers an increase in the deaths of residents in Washington State’s worker’s comp system. People are dying of overdoses across Appalachia at unprecedented rates, and prosecutors have begun prosecuting pill mill doctors like David Procter. Upon examination of Purdue’s records, Brownlee determines that the company has been training salespeople to claim that OxyContin is nonaddictive. In 2006, Brownlee prepares to sue Purdue Pharma for criminal misbranding.
Back tar heroin spread from the Western U.S. to the Eastern U.S., and so did an awareness of the opiate epidemic, as researchers like Mai and public officials like Brownlee began to see the full extent of the increase in overdose deaths. The criminal misbranding suit Brownlee brought against Purdue diminishes the company’s legitimacy, placing them more in line with criminal, illegitimate drug enterprises like the Xalisco Boys, for example.
Themes
