Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America

Macy returns to the story of Jones’s role in bringing heroin to suburban and small-town Virginia. Woodstock, Virginia, was the home of George’s Chicken processing plant, which provided employment to nonviolent felon offenders in place of prison. Jones came to Woodstock as a part of that program. In 2012, drug detectives Brent Lutz and Bill Metcalf gained insight from an informant who told them that someone known only as “D.C.” (the street name of Ronnie Jones, it turns out) was importing bulk heroin from New York City and selling it in town.

By 2012, places like Woodstock that were dependent on agriculture or processing plants were catching up to more rural communities when it came to the loss of jobs due to shifts in the economy. Macy quotes Syracuse University professor Shannon Monnat, who saw the loss of jobs in these communities as a “structural problem, where the American dream becomes a scam” (152)—an argument supported by three credible sources according to the note on page 336.

When DC began bringing heroin to town in bulk, he found a ready market. People no longer had to be commuter-dealers (people who bought drugs in cities like Baltimore, then came back to town with a stash and some to sell to pay their supplier).