This is a biblical story that is written by an academic. I love the story but am less than thrilled with the scholarly jargon and references. But there is something to this and it should be read. It reminds me of Dominic Crossan.
It is about an epidemic of heroin addiction in an hispanic community in New Mexico. The author traces it back to throwing the hispanics off the land from the 1940's to make way for Los Alamos through to e 1960's when hippies bought up the land for communes. This is a social disease, something that happens when a conquered people are unjustly deprived of their land.
The author writes her book from a treatment center, where she works and does case studies. The state applies the criminal-medical method of recovery. That is, heroin use is criminalized, but treatment at the facility is offered as a substitute for prison. But that largely fails. Then the medical system is privatized, and the treatment center is closed because it cannot establish it is effective.
Then in the concluding chapter there are green shoots of recovery when the treatment center is reopened and therapy includes working the land. Junkies plant corn, chiles, and squash, and smile.
