On a recent episode of "WTF with Marc Maron," Quinones paints a lurid tale of addiction in America. His brash and hyperbolic writing style misleads his audience.
Huh...cell phones are like heroin coming from a guy obsessing enough about bicycle parts to begin seeing them everywhere while blaming meth addicts for obsessing about bicycle parts. As for chicken nuggets, I don't eat other animals so I wouldn't know much, but the digression to nuggets and the human condition from someone suffering from an unhealthy obsession with bicycle parts doesn't surprise me.
Here on planet Earth, prop-(pronounced like "Propane")-dope is very real. It's highly sought after because of its purity and duration after onset; it's also a formula that hasn't been around for years because the P2P precursor has been on the DEA's most wanted list for the last four decades (er...at least since the 80s when another drug made with P2P became popular - phencyclidine aka PCP). Ask anyone from his era that uses meth when was the last time they saw prop-dope and you'll confirm what I'm saying here.
Do you think that intentionally dropping lies into the social fabric of the United States could be one way for a journalist to measure the impact of his own lies? I mean, if he drops lies on a podcast and then six months later the NIH is doing studies to measure his false claims, then a man like Quinones who likely suffers from numerous traits similar to that of a homeless meth addict diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder (i.e., psychopathy or sociopathy in the nomenclature of his day) is winning, right? At least in his delusional mind he's winning.
His argument against Housing First is so ridiculous that I can't even begin to tear it apart, but I will say shame on anyone who believes it. I'd sure love to ask him what in the major fuck is he doing that is so much better and (dare I say) more effective than Housing First? I'm 99.9% confident his answer will begin with something on the lines of "ummm...hmmm...well...I..uhhh..."
Of course color matters to Quinones! Isn't he from the era of Reds and Yellow-Jackets? Has anyone stopped to ask if those were his favorite when he was a teenager? His answer will most likely be in the affirmative. Perhaps therein lies his actually problem with colored pills; perhaps he has unresolved issues with himself and his own pattern of consuming colored pills? Maybe vitamins, maybe not.
The big question is how much money does our Sammy-boy think he's really gonna make by riding on the coat-tails of Breaking Bad?
Thank you for writing this. I just stumbled upon an interview with Quinones and was horrified by his assertions. It should be obvious to anyone who has ever met an addict or worked on any facet of the problems of homelessness or addiction and certainly to anyone who has ever used drugs that this man is telling a story largely created by his own bias and ignorance.
His work reads like a 19th century observational account by a European in Africa. Why aren’t more people in the harm reduction and social services communities speaking out about this? The fact that his voice is the one being heard and considered by policy makers is terrifying.
Everything he’s advocating is regressive and has been failing for decades. The turn away from a housing first approach, dismissing harm reduction efforts like safe injection sites, claiming that decriminalization cannot be responsibly implemented in the “age of new meth and fentanyl”, the characterization of drug users as completely untethered from reality and beyond help, claiming drugs are responsible for nearly all “tent cities”, and suggesting that incarceration is an ideal way to force people to detox (while simultaneously claiming they can’t be helped because they’re so detached from reality and “answer only in numbers”) - this is rhetoric that flies in the face of actual evidence about what works to combat homelessness and addiction.
“If you look hard at how and why people got there, it’s very unlikely that it’s because a drug trafficker somewhere in Sinaloa switched up the precursor used to make meth.“
It’s also NOT likely that it’s because of a marketing campaign by a pharmaceutical company.
Like James Ellroy's mind does crossfit
Quinones also suffers from "new" form of toxic masculinity which makes him prone to delusions.
Huh...cell phones are like heroin coming from a guy obsessing enough about bicycle parts to begin seeing them everywhere while blaming meth addicts for obsessing about bicycle parts. As for chicken nuggets, I don't eat other animals so I wouldn't know much, but the digression to nuggets and the human condition from someone suffering from an unhealthy obsession with bicycle parts doesn't surprise me.
Here on planet Earth, prop-(pronounced like "Propane")-dope is very real. It's highly sought after because of its purity and duration after onset; it's also a formula that hasn't been around for years because the P2P precursor has been on the DEA's most wanted list for the last four decades (er...at least since the 80s when another drug made with P2P became popular - phencyclidine aka PCP). Ask anyone from his era that uses meth when was the last time they saw prop-dope and you'll confirm what I'm saying here.
Do you think that intentionally dropping lies into the social fabric of the United States could be one way for a journalist to measure the impact of his own lies? I mean, if he drops lies on a podcast and then six months later the NIH is doing studies to measure his false claims, then a man like Quinones who likely suffers from numerous traits similar to that of a homeless meth addict diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder (i.e., psychopathy or sociopathy in the nomenclature of his day) is winning, right? At least in his delusional mind he's winning.
His argument against Housing First is so ridiculous that I can't even begin to tear it apart, but I will say shame on anyone who believes it. I'd sure love to ask him what in the major fuck is he doing that is so much better and (dare I say) more effective than Housing First? I'm 99.9% confident his answer will begin with something on the lines of "ummm...hmmm...well...I..uhhh..."
Of course color matters to Quinones! Isn't he from the era of Reds and Yellow-Jackets? Has anyone stopped to ask if those were his favorite when he was a teenager? His answer will most likely be in the affirmative. Perhaps therein lies his actually problem with colored pills; perhaps he has unresolved issues with himself and his own pattern of consuming colored pills? Maybe vitamins, maybe not.
The big question is how much money does our Sammy-boy think he's really gonna make by riding on the coat-tails of Breaking Bad?
Thank you for writing this. I just stumbled upon an interview with Quinones and was horrified by his assertions. It should be obvious to anyone who has ever met an addict or worked on any facet of the problems of homelessness or addiction and certainly to anyone who has ever used drugs that this man is telling a story largely created by his own bias and ignorance.
His work reads like a 19th century observational account by a European in Africa. Why aren’t more people in the harm reduction and social services communities speaking out about this? The fact that his voice is the one being heard and considered by policy makers is terrifying.
Everything he’s advocating is regressive and has been failing for decades. The turn away from a housing first approach, dismissing harm reduction efforts like safe injection sites, claiming that decriminalization cannot be responsibly implemented in the “age of new meth and fentanyl”, the characterization of drug users as completely untethered from reality and beyond help, claiming drugs are responsible for nearly all “tent cities”, and suggesting that incarceration is an ideal way to force people to detox (while simultaneously claiming they can’t be helped because they’re so detached from reality and “answer only in numbers”) - this is rhetoric that flies in the face of actual evidence about what works to combat homelessness and addiction.
Hi Zach,
Do you have any recommendations for alternative scholarly sources about fentanyl?
“If you look hard at how and why people got there, it’s very unlikely that it’s because a drug trafficker somewhere in Sinaloa switched up the precursor used to make meth.“
It’s also NOT likely that it’s because of a marketing campaign by a pharmaceutical company.