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美国国家公共电台 NPR America's Opioid Epidemic

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RAMTIN ARABLOUEI, HOST:

Hey, everyone. Before we start the show, we want to ask you to do something that's going to help us better understand how you're using podcasts.

RUND ABDELFATAH, HOST:

So if you have just 10 minutes, please complete a short, anonymous1 survey at NPR.org/podcastsurvey - one word.

ARABLOUEI: OK, on with the show.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ABDELFATAH: Lee County, Va., is located in the southwest corner of Appalachia. And at the turn of the 20th century, its economy was booming. The coal and rail industries were thriving. People were moving in. Houses were being built. Things were looking up.

ARABLOUEI: But by the turn of the 21st century, Lee County looked different. A lot of its buildings were abandoned. The coal mining industry was struggling. And many of its residents were hooked on opioids.

ABDELFATAH: One of those residents was Arnold Fayne McCauley.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

BETH MACY: This was a man in his '70s. He had been a full-time2 coal miner.

ABDELFATAH: For years, Arnold was the guy who got stuff done.

MACY: I asked his daughter what she remembered growing up. And she said, my memory of him was he worked.

ARABLOUEI: Coal mining is not an easy job. And Arnold suffered a lot of injuries at work, so he was no stranger to doctors.

MACY: Treated numerous times with immediate-release opioids and had always been able to get off.

ARABLOUEI: Then one day, he saw a new doctor who prescribed him a drug called OxyContin.

MACY: And this drug turned him into a nonfunctioning person. He loses his job, loses his family.

ARABLOUEI: He ends up dead, under shady circumstances, in his truck.

MACY: His truck overturned and pill bottles sort of, like, loose around him.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ABDELFATAH: The thing is, in this county, Arnold's story wasn't that uncommon4. Person after person walked into the doctor's office after being prescribed that drug...

MACY: They'd be like, doc, I lost my family. I lost my house. I lost my farm.

ABDELFATAH: ...With a strangely familiar story.

MACY: I lost my family. I lost my house. I lost my farm. That drug is my God.

(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: The opioid epidemic5 is getting worse.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: More people are addicted7 to opioid painkillers8 than ever before.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #3: On average, 130 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #4: The deadliest drug crisis in American history.

ELAINE QUIJANO: And there are virtually no signs of it getting better.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ABDELFATAH: You're listening to THROUGHLINE from NPR.

ARABLOUEI: Where we go back in time...

ABDELFATAH: To understand the present.

Hey, I'm Rund Abdelfatah.

ARABLOUEI: I'm Ramtin Arablouei.

ABDELFATAH: And on this episode...

ARABLOUEI: America's opioid epidemic.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ABDELFATAH: We hear a lot about opioids these days. The U.S. has been in the midst of an opioid crisis, and it's gotten worse in the past few years.

ARABLOUEI: About 400,000 people have died in the last two decades, making it the deadliest drug epidemic in American history.

ABDELFATAH: Entire communities, like Lee County, have been devastated9 by it. It feels like there's no end in sight.

ARABLOUEI: But how did we get into this mess? Where does this crisis actually begin? And how does it fit into America's longer history with opioids?

ABDELFATAH: After all, opioids aren't new. They've been around for thousands of years.

ARABLOUEI: Humans throughout history have turned to opium10, which comes from the poppy plant, for things like pain relief.

ABDELFATAH: The ancient Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, Chinese all used it.

ARABLOUEI: Wars have been fought over it. Empires built, fortunes made.

ABDELFATAH: But America's opioid story is uniquely American.

ARABLOUEI: To understand today's opioid crisis, we need to explore the complicated relationship we've had with opioids for over a century now.

ABDELFATAH: While opioids can be addictive11 and dangerous, they've also provided very real relief for a lot of people.

ARABLOUEI: So we're going to tell you the story of three game-changing opioids.

ABDELFATAH: Morphine...

ARABLOUEI: Heroin12...

ABDELFATAH: And OxyContin.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ARABLOUEI: Part I - morphine.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ABDELFATAH: In the early 1800s, a German pharmacist named Friedrich Serturner was hard at work conducting experiments on the opium poppy plant.

(SOUNDBITE OF LIQUID BUBBLING)

ABDELFATAH: He was trying to figure out how to isolate13 its most valuable component14 - the alkaloid, the ingredient in the plant that gets you high and - more importantly for his research - provides pain relief. It was something no one had been able to do before.

(SOUNDBITE OF LIQUID BUBBLING)

ABDELFATAH: For years, Serturner ran all sorts of tests in the lab on stray dogs and even on himself.

ARABLOUEI: Eventually, he cracked the code and managed to extract the alkaloid from the poppy plant. He called it morphine after the Greek god of dreams, Morpheus. And for the next few years, Serturner continued to study this new thing. And he started getting more and more nervous about how it might be used in the future.

MACY: He says, we must be very careful with this drug. And he warns people that calamity15 is around the corner.

ABDELFATAH: This is Beth Macy.

MACY: I'm a journalist and an author based in Roanoke, Va.

ABDELFATAH: Her latest book is called "Dopesick."

ARABLOUEI: So several decades after morphine is discovered, Serturner's fears are realized.

ABDELFATAH: Calamity strikes an ocean away in the United States.

(SOUNDBITE OF CANNON16 FIRING)

ABDELFATAH: The Civil War begins.

UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Yelling).

ARABLOUEI: It's an incredibly bloody17 war, the deadliest in American history.

ABDELFATAH: And most of those deaths actually happened off the battlefield.

ARABLOUEI: From things like disease and infection. But there was this great, new way of controlling pain.

ABDELFATAH: That new drug morphine. And the U.S. imported a lot of it. Many soldiers became hooked and stayed hooked after the war ended.

DAVID COURTWRIGHT: There's a saying or a cliche18 that morphine addiction19 in the late 19th century was the army disease or the soldier's disease.

ARABLOUEI: This is drug historian David Courtwright. And he says that nickname hides a significant detail.

COURTWRIGHT: Which is other evidence suggests very strongly that the majority of addicts20 were women.

ARABLOUEI: So Courtwright says while a lot of soldiers did return from the front addicted to morphine, it appears that as a century went on, women began to make up the majority of morphine addicts in the U.S.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

NANCY CAMPBELL: Why was morphine prescribed in the 19th century? It's prescribed for pain of all kinds, which women tended to be diagnosed with to a great - much greater degree than men.

ARABLOUEI: This is Nancy Campbell. She's a historian of drugs and drug addiction.

COURTWRIGHT: Men were expected to bear pain more stoically. They were not expected to seek out doctors for every ache and pain. There were also supposed racial differences in the ability to tolerate pain.

ABDELFATAH: So if you were a white woman who could afford prescription22 drugs and you went to the doctor for, say, a cough or menstrual cramps23, you were way more likely to leave with a prescription for morphine than anyone else. One doctor, Frederick Heman Hubbard, wrote in 1881, uterine and ovarian complications cause more ladies to fall into the opium habit than all other diseases combined. So morphine was the catchall drug that doctors and pharmacists used for pretty much everything. And they prescribed it to women like Mrs. Matilda Webster.

CAMPBELL: Mother of nine children who suffered from neuralgia.

ARABLOUEI: Neuralgia's a condition where nerve pain causes a stabbing, burning sensation, usually in the head or face.

CAMPBELL: She sent, one night, one of her nine children to Boyd's, which was her usual South Brooklyn drug store. And the child reported to the druggist that her mother was in great pain - bodily pain and was asking for something to help her go to sleep. The druggist, who was pretty familiar with Mrs. Webster, packaged up a couple of doses of morphine consisting of one grain each. And Mrs. Webster, instead of doing what the druggist thought she would do, which is taking a little at a time until her pain was controlled, took everything - the whole supply. And she went into a coma24, lingered in a comatose25 state and expired 24 hours later.

ARABLOUEI: She had overdosed on morphine. And the druggist who gave her the morphine was put on trial, which Campbell says was unusual because overdoses normally were reported as deaths by natural causes. But Matilda's husband wasn't willing to let go and eventually was given...

CAMPBELL: Five thousand dollars in, you know, 1868.

ABDELFATAH: 1868 - so not long after the Civil War ended, people were already starting to suspect that morphine was potentially dangerous.

MACY: Like, warning, warning. This drug is not safe.

ABDELFATAH: As the 19th century went on, on top of the thousands of veterans who'd become addicted during the war, thousands more people, many women, became addicted.

ARABLOUEI: Still, doctors kept prescribing morphine throughout the 1800s despite the warnings mostly because there just weren't many good alternatives. I mean, aspirin27 wasn't even marketed until 1899.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ARABLOUEI: By the early 20th century, tens of thousands of Americans were addicted to narcotics29 like morphine. People were dying of overdoses, which sounds pretty familiar.

ABDELFATAH: Yeah, a lot like the crisis we're in today. People would go to the doctor's office, get a prescription for morphine, become addicted, maybe even die.

ARABLOUEI: And communities, who were mostly white, were left devastated. Remember; morphine was disproportionately prescribed to white women at the time.

ABDELFATAH: And just like now, it probably had a lot of people asking...

MACY: Oh, my Lord, what have we unleashed30 on this country?

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ABDELFATAH: One doctor wrote in 1884...

MACY: Prompt action is then demanded lest our land should become stupefied by the direful effects of narcotics and thus disease physically31, mentally and morally, the love of liberty swallowed up by the love of opium while the masses of our people would become fit subjects for a despot.

ARABLOUEI: But undoing32 this crisis would not be easy.

ABDELFATAH: Right. Like, how do you take so many addicted people and make them unhooked?

ARABLOUEI: Well, in the early 1900s, one pharmaceutical33 company came up with a new drug to try to do just that.

ABDELFATAH: And it would transform the landscape of drugs and drug addiction in the U.S.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ARABLOUEI: In the process, they unleashed an even scarier monster - our next drug, heroin.

(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)

COURTWRIGHT: Would you please say one, two, three, four?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Yeah. One, two, three, four.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Testing - one, two, three, four.

ABDELFATAH: Part II - heroin.

(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)

COURTWRIGHT: Amparo, where were you born?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking Spanish).

AMPARO: San Juan.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: San Juan, Puerto Rico.

COURTWRIGHT: When were you born?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: May 8, 1914 in old Harlem Hospital - 137th Street on Lenox Avenue in Harlem.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ARABLOUEI: These are the voices of former heroin addicts who became hooked in the 1920s and '30s. David Courtwright talked to them in the 1980s.

(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: One night, I walked in the bathroom. And I saw this girl sitting on the tub with this rubber band around her arm, a needle, and it scared me to death as I had never seen nothing like that before. And she said, oh, this is something. Try this.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: In 1921, I started using heroin. See?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: I said, I'll never use another needle. And I actually meant it.

COURTWRIGHT: Did you know that it was heroin?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking Spanish).

AMPARO: (Speaking Spanish).

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: Everybody was sick and puking and laying all over the curb34 (imitates vomiting).

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: It only takes a few days of continuous use you get - to pick up a habit.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Once you start with that, you can't stop.

ABDELFATAH: We know now that heroin is more potent26, more likely to cause addiction, than morphine. But when it first appeared, heroin was seen as a safe alternative to morphine, the hero to end the morphine crisis.

ARABLOUEI: That initial perception of heroin as a safe alternative was no coincidence. In the late 1890s, the pharmaceutical company Bayer began marketing35 heroin...

CAMPBELL: As a non-addictive wonder drug.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ARABLOUEI: They published ads claiming that heroin would relieve your cough, even marketing it to children.

ABDELFATAH: Heroin for kids - imagine that.

ARABLOUEI: And this whole marketing campaign was uncharted territory at the time - the idea that pharmaceutical companies could be big business in a way that, say, toys or textiles are.

CAMPBELL: Originally, pharmaceutical manufacturers were called ethical36 pharmaceutical houses.

ARABLOUEI: Again, Nancy Campbell.

CAMPBELL: And they did not market direct to consumers. Bayer did market direct to consumers.

COURTWRIGHT: But even so - even so, by the early 1900s, people are beginning to write articles for medical journals with titles like - and I quote - The Heroin Habit: Another Curse, in which they point out that, yeah, you can get addicted to this stuff too.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ARABLOUEI: In 1906, the American Medical Association included heroin in its annual publication with this disclaimer. The habit is readily formed and leads to the most deplorable results. Despite that warning, heroin was readily available as an over-the-counter drug. And politicians became more and more suspicious of its supposed non-addictiveness.

ABDELFATAH: In 1914, a new law called the Harrison Act was passed. It put a tax on morphine and heroin and forced doctors to register drugs with the government to prevent doctors from over-prescribing them. See; even though there was growing awareness37 about the dangers of opioids, some doctors were still prescribing morphine. And the government didn't want to leave room for a repeat of the morphine epidemic with either morphine or any new opioid that came along. So they decided38 to step in.

COURTWRIGHT: The idea is to create a kind of closed system in which everything is transparent39, and the narcotics are going only for legitimate40 medical purposes.

CAMPBELL: That act was important because it criminalized something that formerly41 was not thought to be a crime.

ABDELFATAH: Up until then, opioid addiction was seen as a medical problem, not a criminal one. The result of this new law was fewer and fewer doctors prescribing morphine and almost no doctors prescribing heroin. Problem solved, right?

ARABLOUEI: Well, yes and no. On the one hand, morphine use dramatically decreased. But on the other hand, this law had unintended consequences.

CAMPBELL: It began to move both morphine and heroin, really, into the fringes of the underworld.

ARABLOUEI: After all, if people couldn't get what they needed from a doctor, they were probably going to look for it somewhere else.

MACY: The moment they were prescribed and that prescription ran out, they were soon experiencing that feeling of dope sickness.

ARABLOUEI: Again, Beth Macy.

MACY: That excruciating withdrawal42 that's like the worst flu times a hundred. And then they're going to the black market for heroin or for pills.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: They want your sweet, innocent girls to take the bull so they can be enticed43 into honky-tonks.

ABDELFATAH: Not long after that, in 1920, prohibition44 began, banning alcohol throughout the country.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: I say alcohol must go.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

CAMPBELL: And during that time, organized crime, also called the syndicate, begins to grow.

ABDELFATAH: Underground networks of alcohol smugglers began popping up everywhere, importing alcohol from countries around the world. And those networks made it easy to smuggle45 in other things, too.

CAMPBELL: So you begin to get markets for illicit46 products.

ABDELFATAH: Products like heroin. So heroin started to be seen as a drug of the underworld - a quote, unquote, "street drug." And in 1924, the government outlawed47 heroin altogether, making it completely illegal, even for medicinal use, pushing the heroin market even further underground.

(SOUNDBITE OF GUNFIRE)

ARABLOUEI: Fast forward to the 1940s. World War II is coming to an end.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ARABLOUEI: And a lot like the post-Civil War period, opioids became a big issue in post-World War II America.

CAMPBELL: Yes. Every war has its drug. And what typically happens is, after wars end, that drug becomes a domestic problem. We have not thought well about how the practice of war seems to require so much pharmaceutical support.

ARABLOUEI: During the war, the supply of opioids dried up. But after the war ended, opioids began flooding into the black market through illicit networks.

CAMPBELL: You begin to see heroin traffic heat up.

ABDELFATAH: These black markets were mostly concentrated in big cities, where a lot of the drug routes pass through. So by this time, the average opioid addict6 looked different.

CAMPBELL: The median age falls to age 20 or so. It's more frequently someone from a community of color - African-Americans, Puerto Ricans in New York.

COURTWRIGHT: So by the 1940s and 1950s, narcotic28 addiction in the United States is mainly centered on big cities and it's mainly a matter of drug traffickers smuggling48 the drug, heroin, into the country and distributing it through various illicit networks.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #5: U.S. Customs officers and police are having another drive to round up dope smugglers. And here's some of the swag. Concealed49 in barrels of olive oil, they find millions of dollars' worth of deadly heroin, enough, they say, to kill six million people.

CAMPBELL: So in 1951, Congress is concerned enough about the situation that they passed the first mandatory50 minimum sentences for drug use.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ARABLOUEI: Otherwise known as the Boggs Act.

CAMPBELL: They cannot say these are innocent teenagers who are preyed51 upon by dealers52. They have to sentence them to five, 10, 15 years, depending upon the quantity they possess at the time of the arrest.

ARABLOUEI: And keep in mind, these heroin markets were in majority black and brown neighborhoods in cities. So the Boggs Act disproportionately affected53 those communities.

COURTWRIGHT: What we think about addicts depends very much on who is addicted. Again and again, in the literature, you'll see this distinction being made between medical users or medical addicts and pleasure users or recreational users, and they were generally considered to be more blameworthy.

ARABLOUEI: Morphine addicts were seen as medical users, heroin addicts as recreational users.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: But there's one sure thing. This is one game nobody beats. If you use narcotics, before long, you'll have the habit.

COURTWRIGHT: Another way to say this is that if the composition of the addict population hadn't changed - if we had the same pattern of mostly medical, mostly female, mostly morphine addicts that we'd had in 1870, then I don't think American drug policy would have taken the punitive54 turn that it did.

ABDELFATAH: In the 1950s, that punitive approach got even more intense. Hearings were held in 14 major cities across the country. Politicians declared war on heroin.

CAMPBELL: And Congress decides to stiffen55 those penalties, allow for deportation56 of foreign nationals and the death penalty to dealers.

COURTWRIGHT: It wasn't the drug problem in the United States. It was the heroin problem.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #8: Most of the known addicts are addicted to heroin. Here is heroin - this white powder.

COURTWRIGHT: As far as the policymakers in Washington were concerned and as far as the police in most American big cities were concerned, heroin was the drug to worry about in the '50s and the '60s and early '70s.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ABDELFATAH: Despite all these efforts, heroin remained on the streets. And drug users continued to be treated as criminals.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

RICHARD NIXON: America's public enemy number one, in the United States, is drug abuse.

ARABLOUEI: Until a new opioid appeared on the scene.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ABDELFATAH: Part III - OxyContin.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ARABLOUEI: OK, first question. Have you ever heard the name Sackler? It probably sounds familiar because it pops up on buildings everywhere.

PATRICK KEEFE: On universities and hospital buildings and medical facilities and art museums the world over.

ARABLOUEI: Plus it's been in the headlines a lot lately for multiple lawsuits58. The Sacklers are one of the richest families in America. And for generations now, they've had a real sweet spot for philanthropy. And you may be wondering...

KEEFE: Well, where did all that money come from?

ARABLOUEI: The answer to that question gets at the thing that the Sacklers are facing lawsuits over - whether they bear some responsibility for the opioid epidemic.

KEEFE: There's a kind of conversation I think we have in America where we realize that a lot of our great cultural and educational institutions were built on money that we would now think of as tainted59 money.

ARABLOUEI: This is Patrick Radden Keefe. He writes for The New Yorker. And Patrick spent months investigating the history of the Sacklers for a piece called "The Family That Built An Empire Of Pain." He says the story of how the Sacklers made their money is also the story of how the drug at the center of today's opioid crisis, OxyContin, came to be.

ABDELFATAH: It all begins in the 1950s...

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ABDELFATAH: ...With three brothers in Brooklyn.

KEEFE: Arthur and Mortimer and Raymond Sackler.

ABDELFATAH: They're from an immigrant family.

KEEFE: They're - grow up in the Great Depression.

ABDELFATAH: And all three of them...

KEEFE: All three brothers train as doctors.

ABDELFATAH: The oldest brother, Arthur Sackler, is kind of the patriarch of the family.

KEEFE: He's this gap-toothed, brilliant, brilliant guy who becomes a doctor.

ABDELFATAH: Specializes in psychiatry60.

KEEFE: Does a huge amount of pathbreaking medical research in the 1950s.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ABDELFATAH: Arthur and his brothers authored more than a hundred studies on the biochemical roots of mental illness. In other words, they challenged a lot of Sigmund Freud's ideas. Despite his success in that field, Arthur Sackler began to get restless. After all, he was a natural-born entrepreneur. So...

KEEFE: On the side...

ABDELFATAH: ...Arthur joined and later bought an ad agency that specialized61 in medical advertising62.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MAD MEN")

JOHN HAMM: (As Don Draper) It's clean. It's simple. And it's tantalizingly63 incomplete. What's missing?

ARABLOUEI: I thought of him was almost a kind of Don Draper figure, where, in the 1950s, you have this revolution in advertising in which all of these new persuasive64 techniques are being brought to bear to sell everything from gym socks to Ford21 convertibles65. And Arthur Sackler has this revelation, which is, what if we applied66 some of those bells and whistles to the way we sell drugs, the way we sell medicine? He's the father of modern pharmaceutical marketing.

DAVID HERZBERG: I don't mean to, you know, rain on a parade or anything, but I've been a little bit surprised to hear him credited as the inventor of this phenomenon, which seemed to me to be everywhere in the 1950s.

ARABLOUEI: This is David Herzberg. He's a professor of history at the University at Buffalo67.

HERZBERG: There was this purposeful turn in the 1950s to really institutionalize and expand consumer markets in all their various forms and guises68, from real estate to pharmaceuticals69.

ARABLOUEI: Arthur Sackler may not have been the only one breaking into the medical advertising game at the time, but he was definitely one of the best because his approach was innovative70. Back in the early 1900s when Bayer tried advertising heroin, their marketing campaigns were basic.

CAMPBELL: If you look at any of these early-20th-century ads that Bayer puts out...

ARABLOUEI: Again, Nancy Campbell.

CAMPBELL: It's not really made visual in the ways that we think of advertising as being visual.

ARABLOUEI: In other words, they were pretty boring.

ABDELFATAH: And what Arthur realized that the people at Bayer hadn't was that advertising a drug is an art of seduction. And it doesn't actually begin with the consumer - the patient.

PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE: The first person you need to seduce71 is the doctor.

ABDELFATAH: Why?

KEEFE: People trust doctors. And he trusted doctors. And so if you have an endorsement72 from a doctor, it's like putting Mickey Mantle73 on a box of Wheaties.

ABDELFATAH: So he started developing ad campaigns...

KEEFE: Brilliant and very persuasive advertising campaigns.

ABDELFATAH: ...With doctors at the center of them.

KEEFE: You want to sell a lot of a drug, you sell it to these doctors who will then prescribe it to their patients.

ARABLOUEI: Which sounds pretty similar to how morphine spread.

ABDELFATAH: Right. But in this case, the business model was much more deliberate.

KEEFE: And this ended up becoming, I think, a really key aspect of how we got to where we are with the opioid crisis is that - it's one thing to go out on a street corner and try and find some sketchy74 person who's going to sell you something in an alley75. It's another thing altogether to go into your doctor's office and have your doctor write you a prescription.

ARABLOUEI: But doctors were skeptical76 of prescribing opioids.

HERZBERG: Physicians and patients have now learned their lesson. And so...

ARABLOUEI: Arthur, along with other pharmaceutical companies at the time, turned to two different classes of drugs called barbiturates and benzodiazepines.

HERZBERG: Which were not opioids and were - they're not derived77 from plants, so their manufacture and circulation was relatively78 controlled. They didn't seem like they posed a problem. And as a result...

CAMPBELL: We've had a new acceptance of the idea that there is a pill for every ill and that taking pills can support productive everyday lives.

ARABLOUEI: And Arthur Sackler's marketing techniques played a big part in that shift.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

KEEFE: He develops his first real fortune marketing drugs like Valium. And he sort of brings along his brothers, Mortimer and Raymond. And they end up having a - buying a small pharmaceutical company called - at the time, it was called Purdue Frederick. And the company starts developing a succession of drugs.

ABDELFATAH: During the 1950s and '60s, Arthur and his brothers began making so much money. We're talking millions and millions of dollars.

ARABLOUEI: They were a company that knew how to market their products really well, which is the goal of any business.

ABDELFATAH: And a lot of people did benefit from these drugs.

ARABLOUEI: But their success and the growing pharmaceutical industry made some politicians suspicious. So Congress held a hearing about the pharmaceutical industry and called Arthur Sackler to testify.

KEEFE: And he was a genius. I mean, he was a really brilliant guy. And he just - I've read the transcripts79. And he dances circles around these guys.

ARABLOUEI: In Keefe's New Yorker piece, he quotes from a Congressional staffer's memo3. "The Sackler empire is a completely integrated operation in that it can devise a new drug in its drug development enterprise, have the drug clinically tested and secure favorable reports on the drug from the various hospitals with which they have connections."

KEEFE: It's like they have drugs that they're developing and then medical journals that can run articles about the drugs and then doctors who can go out and promote those drugs. So it becomes this extraordinarily80 sophisticated, self-serving system.

ABDELFATAH: Arthur and his brothers came out of the hearing unscathed. Their drugs kept selling. They kept making money. Doctors and pharmaceutical companies became more and more intertwined. And that idea - that there's a pill for every ill - became the new status quo. But almost none of those pills were opioids. Remember; after morphine and heroin, doctors were resistant81 to prescribing opioids in any form because they turned out to be really addictive.

HERZBERG: Heroin was criminalized in 1924 and sales of morphine and other familiar opioids were restricted robustly82. The pharmaceutical industry tried to introduce new blockbuster opioids every few years for the next 70 years, but these kinds of campaigns were never allowed to come to fruition. There was a very fierce counterattack against any idea that there could be such a thing as a non-addictive opioid.

ARABLOUEI: But in the 1990s, that started to change. In fact, pain itself was redefined.

MACY: Yeah. So early to mid-'90s physicians, pharmaceutical companies, pain groups funded by pharmaceutical companies...

ABDELFATAH: Again, Beth Macy.

MACY: ...Started pushing this notion that we had this epidemic of untreated pain.

ARABLOUEI: Pain became reclassified as a fifth vital sign, like blood pressure, heart rate, temperature.

HERZBERG: You also began to get different ideas about the safety and applicability of opioids for people experiencing pain in the 1990s that comes out of a few, at first, marginal figures in the pain reform movement. But these marginal figures, with shocking rapidity, become dominant83 figures who are claiming that opioids are, in fact, terribly underused, that they are one of the best and first-line treatments for a much wider range of pain. And the reason that these quite radical84 reinterpretations of opioids go from the margins85 to the mainstream86 so rapidly is because of funding from people like the Sacklers, who give them a megaphone for their voices.

ABDELFATAH: At the same time, Purdue Pharma was developing a new drug based on the opioid oxycodone. By this time, Arthur Sackler had passed away. And Richard Sackler - Arthur's nephew - was a leader in the company now called Purdue Pharma. And in 1996...

ARABLOUEI: Purdue released OxyContin.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ABDELFATAH: To market OxyContin, Arthur Sackler's living relatives and Purdue Pharma took his approach to a whole new level.

ARABLOUEI: Starting with the FDA.

KEEFE: There was a evil-genius sophistication to the whole arsenal87 of tricks that were employed to persuade the FDA.

ABDELFATAH: When the FDA approved OxyContin in 1995, it approved a claim that Oxycontin was safer than other, similar drugs on the market with this wording, quote, "delayed absorption, as provided by OxyContin tablets, is believed to reduce the abuse liability of a drug," end quote.

ARABLOUEI: Oxycontin's biggest selling point was that it had a time-release mechanism88 built into it. So if you took one pill, the drug would be slowly released over the course of 12 hours, offering you longer-lasting pain relief and supposedly...

ABDELFATAH: Supposedly.

ARABLOUEI: ...Making it less addictive.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

HERZBERG: There was no research behind that claim, but it seemed to make sense.

ARABLOUEI: Purdue Pharma didn't provide any clinical studies on how addictive its drug might be.

ABDELFATAH: Persuading the FDA was just the first step. The next step...

KEEFE: Persuade doctors and patients not only that this drug wasn't addictive, but that it was actually a safer bet than some of the other drugs on the market.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #9: We doctors were wrong in thinking that opioids can't be used long-term. They can be and they should be.

ABDELFATAH: They aired ads like this one promoting OxyContin.

ARABLOUEI: They hired an army of pharmaceutical sales reps to travel across the country, marketing OxyContin. They flew doctors to tropical destinations for weekend getaways.

ABDELFATAH: They targeted doctors in rural and poor communities who were already prescribing other opioids.

HERZBERG: OxyContin had this nickname. They called it hillbilly heroin.

KEEFE: Which means - initially89, at least - their customer base was majority white. Drugs like Oxycontin...

HERZBERG: Were prescribed primarily to white patients, number one, because of access to the medical system, which was unequal along lines of race, but number two, public panic over heroin addiction, which was closely associated with racial minorities living in some of the larger cities. And so the idea of addiction, at this time, had become both popularly and politically associated with non-white racial groups. And as a result, there was a reluctance90 on the part of physicians to prescribe potentially addictive medications to those populations.

ARABLOUEI: In other words, David is saying that heroin exaggerated an already-existing racial bias91 among doctors. Because heroin was seen as a black and brown problem, doctors tended to believe those populations were more likely to become hooked on Oxycontin or, really, any prescription pill, and were, therefore, much less likely to prescribe it to those populations.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ABDELFATAH: Within just a few years, it was clear to many doctors and, of course, to many patients, that OxyContin was addictive. In 2007, Purdue Pharma even pleaded guilty to criminal charges that it misbranded OxyContin in marketing by misrepresenting its risk of addiction and its ability to be abused. But by then, small communities were shaken by it, with people of almost all ages becoming addicted and thousands dying.

ARABLOUEI: Plus, doctors and researchers were finding that it led to heroin use. Just like with morphine, when the prescription ran out, heroin became the Plan B, pushing people to seek out heroin, as well as fentanyl, on the black market.

ABDELFATAH: What started out as a, quote, unquote, "hillbilly drug" now...

KEEFE: Crosses ethnic92, geographic93, regional, socioeconomic lines.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ARABLOUEI: Now, it might be easy to forget about the Sacklers in all of this. But lately, they're becoming harder to ignore. Some museums have even been rejecting their donations.

(SOUNDBITE OF CBS BROADCAST)

CINDY HSU: Dozens storm the Guggenheim Museum to protest a donor's alleged94 ties to the opioid crisis.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

RICK SANCHEZ: Yesterday, the National Portrait Gallery in London canceled a million-dollar donation. How dirty does someone's money have to be for a charity to turn down a donation of $1 million?

ABDELFATAH: Along with Purdue Pharma, members of the Sackler family are facing multiple lawsuits over OxyContin.

(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #6: Several members of the billionaire Sackler family...

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #7: Today, the attorney general of Massachusetts pushed for the release of more documents from Purdue Pharma...

ANDREW NAPOLITANO: The Sackler family purporting95 to, as lawyers like to say, pierce the corporate96 veil.

ARABLOUEI: In documents released in these court cases, we've learned that the company is accused of not reporting illegal activity to the government, like improper97 prescribing by doctors. For example, it's alleged a Purdue sales manager wrote to a company official that Purdue was circulating opioids to an illegal pill mill. The employee wrote, quote, "I feel very certain this is an organized drug ring. Shouldn't the DEA be contacted about this?", end quote. Purdue allegedly did nothing about that email for two years.

ABDELFATAH: We've also learned that Richard Sackler seems to have been especially aggressive in pushing the marketing and sale of the drug. One of the lawsuits alleges98 that he badgered sales managers constantly - nights, weekends and holidays - pushing them to sell more. These campaigns were focused on getting doctors to prescribe higher doses to their patients.

ARABLOUEI: The thing is Purdue and the Sacklers have been in this position before. But in the past, even when they've been found guilty and forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and damages...

MACY: It's like me giving you a hundred dollars.

ABDELFATAH: Just a drop in the bucket - not much harm done. But that could change.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #8: Purdue Pharma, the maker57 of OxyContin, agreed to pay $270 million to the state of Oklahoma. The settlement allows Purdue...

ABDELFATAH: There are currently more than 1,600 cases against Purdue Pharma in federal and state courts.

ARABLOUEI: We reached out to Purdue Pharma for comment. And they say, quote, "it is deeply flawed to suggest that activities that last occurred 18 years ago are responsible for today's complex and multifaceted opioid addiction crisis. The bulk of opioids prescribed are not and have never been OxyContin, which represents less than 2 percent of current opioid prescriptions99, and in total, never exceeded 4 percent in any year."

KEEFE: Whatever they're telling themselves, the real legacy100 here is OxyContin and the opioid crisis.

HERZBERG: But I think that there's a risk to attributing it - too much of this to this one family. I mean, it does make for a good story, but it means that it's possible to lose sight of the broader dynamics101 and the broader structures that made them able to do what they did. You know, while they're clearly villains102 in this story - and you get no debate with me about that - the circumstances which made their villainy possible are, in some ways, more important to understand than the fact that those were bad guys.

ABDELFATAH: So David says the opioid story is bigger than the Sacklers or OxyContin or Purdue. It's about our relationship with pain and our very human desire to get rid of it - something people have been trying to solve for forever.

HERZBERG: Life involves a lot of suffering and pain. People desperately103 want relief for it. And so when you hear of something that's new and that there's people with MDs and PhDs after their name, saying, this might be different this time around - sure, if you existed in some pure form of rationalism, you might say, well, you know, that's a little unlikely. But if you're suffering and you want to believe - as, you know, I'm sure all of us have at various times - these things - it matters.

ARABLOUEI: The Sacklers and Purdue tapped into this need for pain relief and made enormous amounts of money in the process. But they aren't the only ones. Big Pharma is much more than one company. It's a vast network built on strategic pharmaceutical marketing, lack of government oversight104 and a whole lot of money.

ABDELFATAH: And I sort of feel like we've been grappling with a version of this problem going all the way back to the Civil War. I mean, sure, it's become this sophisticated system now. But the struggle to figure out what to do with new, better drugs for treating pain and how to deal with their unintended consequences - like, that's not new. Then and now, it raises the same questions. How do we know what pain to live with and what pain to treat? And what are the social costs of continuing to address pain with innovative but potentially addictive drugs?

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ABDELFATAH: That's it for this week's show. I'm Rund Abdelfatah.

ARABLOUEI: I'm Ramtin Arablouei.

ABDELFATAH: And you've been listening to THROUGHLINE from NPR.

ARABLOUEI: This episode was produced by Rund and I.

ABDELFATAH: Our team includes...

JAMIE YORK, BYLINE105: Jamie York.

JORDANA HOCHMAN, BYLINE: Jordana Hochman.

LAWRENCE WU, BYLINE: Lawrence Wu.

NOOR WAZWAZ, BYLINE: Noor Wazwaz.

MICHELLE LANZ, BYLINE: Yo, yo, yo, it's Michelle Lanz. (Singing) Say my name, say my name.

N'JERI EATON, BYLINE: (Laughter) OK, smizing or somber106? N'jeri Eaton.

ARABLOUEI: Thanks also to Anya Grundmann.

ABDELFATAH: Chris Turpin.

ARABLOUEI: Gisele Grayson.

ABDELFATAH: Andrea de Leon.

ARABLOUEI: Greta Pittenger.

ABDELFATAH: And Mark Memmott. Our music was composed by Kristina Reznikov and Drop Electric.

ARABLOUEI: And a special thank you to Columbia University Oral History Project and David Courtwright for letting us use the powerful interviews they did with people who struggled with addiction.

ABDELFATAH: If you like something you heard or you have an idea for an episode, please write us at [email protected] or hit us up on Twitter, @throughlinenpr.

ARABLOUEI: Thanks for listening.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)


点击收听单词发音收听单词发音  

1 anonymous lM2yp     
adj.无名的;匿名的;无特色的
参考例句:
  • Sending anonymous letters is a cowardly act.寄匿名信是懦夫的行为。
  • The author wishes to remain anonymous.作者希望姓名不公开。
2 full-time SsBz42     
adj.满工作日的或工作周的,全时间的
参考例句:
  • A full-time job may be too much for her.全天工作她恐怕吃不消。
  • I don't know how she copes with looking after her family and doing a full-time job.既要照顾家庭又要全天工作,我不知道她是如何对付的。
3 memo 4oXzGj     
n.照会,备忘录;便笺;通知书;规章
参考例句:
  • Do you want me to send the memo out?您要我把这份备忘录分发出去吗?
  • Can you type a memo for me?您能帮我打一份备忘录吗?
4 uncommon AlPwO     
adj.罕见的,非凡的,不平常的
参考例句:
  • Such attitudes were not at all uncommon thirty years ago.这些看法在30年前很常见。
  • Phil has uncommon intelligence.菲尔智力超群。
5 epidemic 5iTzz     
n.流行病;盛行;adj.流行性的,流传极广的
参考例句:
  • That kind of epidemic disease has long been stamped out.那种传染病早已绝迹。
  • The authorities tried to localise the epidemic.当局试图把流行病限制在局部范围。
6 addict my4zS     
v.使沉溺;使上瘾;n.沉溺于不良嗜好的人
参考例句:
  • He became gambling addict,and lost all his possessions.他习染上了赌博,最终输掉了全部家产。
  • He assisted a drug addict to escape from drug but failed firstly.一开始他帮助一个吸毒者戒毒但失败了。
7 addicted dzizmY     
adj.沉溺于....的,对...上瘾的
参考例句:
  • He was addicted to heroin at the age of 17.他17岁的时候对海洛因上了瘾。
  • She's become addicted to love stories.她迷上了爱情小说。
8 painkillers 1a67b54ddb73ea8c08a4e55aa1847a55     
n.止痛药( painkiller的名词复数 )
参考例句:
  • The doctor gave him some painkillers to ease the pain. 医生给了他一些止疼片以减缓疼痛。 来自辞典例句
  • The primary painkillers - opiates, like OxyContin - are widely feared, misunderstood and underused. 人们对主要的镇痛药——如鸦片剂奥施康定——存在广泛的恐惧、误解,因此没有充分利用。 来自时文部分
9 devastated eb3801a3063ef8b9664b1b4d1f6aaada     
v.彻底破坏( devastate的过去式和过去分词);摧毁;毁灭;在感情上(精神上、财务上等)压垮adj.毁坏的;极为震惊的
参考例句:
  • The bomb devastated much of the old part of the city. 这颗炸弹炸毁了旧城的一大片地方。
  • His family is absolutely devastated. 他的一家感到极为震惊。
10 opium c40zw     
n.鸦片;adj.鸦片的
参考例句:
  • That man gave her a dose of opium.那男人给了她一剂鸦片。
  • Opium is classed under the head of narcotic.鸦片是归入麻醉剂一类的东西。
11 addictive hJbyL     
adj.(吸毒等)使成瘾的,成为习惯的
参考例句:
  • The problem with video game is that they're addictive.电子游戏机的问题在于它们会使人上瘾。
  • Cigarettes are highly addictive.香烟很容易使人上瘾。
12 heroin IrSzHX     
n.海洛因
参考例句:
  • Customs have made their biggest ever seizure of heroin.海关查获了有史以来最大的一批海洛因。
  • Heroin has been smuggled out by sea.海洛因已从海上偷运出境。
13 isolate G3Exu     
vt.使孤立,隔离
参考例句:
  • Do not isolate yourself from others.不要把自己孤立起来。
  • We should never isolate ourselves from the masses.我们永远不能脱离群众。
14 component epSzv     
n.组成部分,成分,元件;adj.组成的,合成的
参考例句:
  • Each component is carefully checked before assembly.每个零件在装配前都经过仔细检查。
  • Blade and handle are the component parts of a knife.刀身和刀柄是一把刀的组成部分。
15 calamity nsizM     
n.灾害,祸患,不幸事件
参考例句:
  • Even a greater natural calamity cannot daunt us. 再大的自然灾害也压不垮我们。
  • The attack on Pearl Harbor was a crushing calamity.偷袭珍珠港(对美军来说)是一场毁灭性的灾难。
16 cannon 3T8yc     
n.大炮,火炮;飞机上的机关炮
参考例句:
  • The soldiers fired the cannon.士兵们开炮。
  • The cannon thundered in the hills.大炮在山间轰鸣。
17 bloody kWHza     
adj.非常的的;流血的;残忍的;adv.很;vt.血染
参考例句:
  • He got a bloody nose in the fight.他在打斗中被打得鼻子流血。
  • He is a bloody fool.他是一个十足的笨蛋。
18 cliche jbpy6     
n./a.陈词滥调(的);老生常谈(的);陈腐的
参考例句:
  • You should always try to avoid the use of cliche. 你应该尽量避免使用陈词滥调。
  • The old cliche is certainly true:the bigger car do mean bigger profits.有句老话倒的确说得不假:车大利大。
19 addiction JyEzS     
n.上瘾入迷,嗜好
参考例句:
  • He stole money from his parents to feed his addiction.他从父母那儿偷钱以满足自己的嗜好。
  • Areas of drug dealing are hellholes of addiction,poverty and murder.贩卖毒品的地区往往是吸毒上瘾、贫困和发生谋杀的地方。
20 addicts abaa34ffd5d9e0d57b7acefcb3539d0c     
有…瘾的人( addict的名词复数 ); 入迷的人
参考例句:
  • a unit for rehabilitating drug addicts 帮助吸毒者恢复正常生活的机构
  • There is counseling to help Internet addicts?even online. 有咨询机构帮助网络沉迷者。 来自超越目标英语 第3册
21 Ford KiIxx     
n.浅滩,水浅可涉处;v.涉水,涉过
参考例句:
  • They were guarding the bridge,so we forded the river.他们驻守在那座桥上,所以我们只能涉水过河。
  • If you decide to ford a stream,be extremely careful.如果已决定要涉过小溪,必须极度小心。
22 prescription u1vzA     
n.处方,开药;指示,规定
参考例句:
  • The physician made a prescription against sea- sickness for him.医生给他开了个治晕船的药方。
  • The drug is available on prescription only.这种药只能凭处方购买。
23 cramps cramps     
n. 抽筋, 腹部绞痛, 铁箍 adj. 狭窄的, 难解的 v. 使...抽筋, 以铁箍扣紧, 束缚
参考例句:
  • If he cramps again let the line cut him off. 要是它再抽筋,就让这钓索把它勒断吧。
  • "I have no cramps." he said. “我没抽筋,"他说。
24 coma vqxzR     
n.昏迷,昏迷状态
参考例句:
  • The patient rallied from the coma.病人从昏迷中苏醒过来。
  • She went into a coma after swallowing a whole bottle of sleeping pills.她吃了一整瓶安眠药后就昏迷过去了。
25 comatose wXjzR     
adj.昏睡的,昏迷不醒的
参考例句:
  • Those in extreme fear can be put into a comatose type state.那些极端恐惧的人可能会被安放进一种昏迷状态。
  • The doctors revived the comatose man.这个医生使这个昏睡的苏醒了。
26 potent C1uzk     
adj.强有力的,有权势的;有效力的
参考例句:
  • The medicine had a potent effect on your disease.这药物对你的病疗效很大。
  • We must account of his potent influence.我们必须考虑他的强有力的影响。
27 aspirin 4yszpM     
n.阿司匹林
参考例句:
  • The aspirin seems to quiet the headache.阿司匹林似乎使头痛减轻了。
  • She went into a chemist's and bought some aspirin.她进了一家药店,买了些阿司匹林。
28 narcotic u6jzY     
n.麻醉药,镇静剂;adj.麻醉的,催眠的
参考例句:
  • Opium is classed under the head of narcotic.鸦片是归入麻醉剂一类的东西。
  • No medical worker is allowed to prescribe any narcotic drug for herself.医务人员不得为自己开处方使用麻醉药品。
29 narcotics 6c5fe7d3dc96f0626f1c875799f8ddb1     
n.麻醉药( narcotic的名词复数 );毒品;毒
参考例句:
  • The use of narcotics by teenagers is a problem in many countries. 青少年服用麻醉药在许多国家中都是一个问题。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
  • Police shook down the club, looking for narcotics. 警方彻底搜查了这个俱乐部,寻找麻醉品。 来自《简明英汉词典》
30 unleashed unleashed     
v.把(感情、力量等)释放出来,发泄( unleash的过去式和过去分词 )
参考例句:
  • The government's proposals unleashed a storm of protest in the press. 政府的提案引发了新闻界的抗议浪潮。
  • The full force of his rage was unleashed against me. 他把所有的怒气都发泄在我身上。 来自《简明英汉词典》
31 physically iNix5     
adj.物质上,体格上,身体上,按自然规律
参考例句:
  • He was out of sorts physically,as well as disordered mentally.他浑身不舒服,心绪也很乱。
  • Every time I think about it I feel physically sick.一想起那件事我就感到极恶心。
32 undoing Ifdz6a     
n.毁灭的原因,祸根;破坏,毁灭
参考例句:
  • That one mistake was his undoing. 他一失足即成千古恨。
  • This hard attitude may have led to his undoing. 可能就是这种强硬的态度导致了他的垮台。
33 pharmaceutical f30zR     
adj.药学的,药物的;药用的,药剂师的
参考例句:
  • She has donated money to establish a pharmaceutical laboratory.她捐款成立了一个药剂实验室。
  • We are engaged in a legal tussle with a large pharmaceutical company.我们正同一家大制药公司闹法律纠纷。
34 curb LmRyy     
n.场外证券市场,场外交易;vt.制止,抑制
参考例句:
  • I could not curb my anger.我按捺不住我的愤怒。
  • You must curb your daughter when you are in church.你在教堂时必须管住你的女儿。
35 marketing Boez7e     
n.行销,在市场的买卖,买东西
参考例句:
  • They are developing marketing network.他们正在发展销售网络。
  • He often goes marketing.他经常去市场做生意。
36 ethical diIz4     
adj.伦理的,道德的,合乎道德的
参考例句:
  • It is necessary to get the youth to have a high ethical concept.必须使青年具有高度的道德观念。
  • It was a debate which aroused fervent ethical arguments.那是一场引发强烈的伦理道德争论的辩论。
37 awareness 4yWzdW     
n.意识,觉悟,懂事,明智
参考例句:
  • There is a general awareness that smoking is harmful.人们普遍认识到吸烟有害健康。
  • Environmental awareness has increased over the years.这些年来人们的环境意识增强了。
38 decided lvqzZd     
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的
参考例句:
  • This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
  • There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。
39 transparent Smhwx     
adj.明显的,无疑的;透明的
参考例句:
  • The water is so transparent that we can see the fishes swimming.水清澈透明,可以看到鱼儿游来游去。
  • The window glass is transparent.窗玻璃是透明的。
40 legitimate L9ZzJ     
adj.合法的,合理的,合乎逻辑的;v.使合法
参考例句:
  • Sickness is a legitimate reason for asking for leave.生病是请假的一个正当的理由。
  • That's a perfectly legitimate fear.怀有这种恐惧完全在情理之中。
41 formerly ni3x9     
adv.从前,以前
参考例句:
  • We now enjoy these comforts of which formerly we had only heard.我们现在享受到了过去只是听说过的那些舒适条件。
  • This boat was formerly used on the rivers of China.这船从前航行在中国内河里。
42 withdrawal Cfhwq     
n.取回,提款;撤退,撤军;收回,撤销
参考例句:
  • The police were forced to make a tactical withdrawal.警方被迫进行战术撤退。
  • They insisted upon a withdrawal of the statement and a public apology.他们坚持要收回那些话并公开道歉。
43 enticed e343c8812ee0e250a29e7b0ccd6b8a2c     
诱惑,怂恿( entice的过去式和过去分词 )
参考例句:
  • He enticed his former employer into another dice game. 他挑逗他原来的老板再赌一次掷骰子。
  • Consumers are courted, enticed, and implored by sellers of goods and services. 消费者受到商品和劳务出售者奉承,劝诱和央求。
44 prohibition 7Rqxw     
n.禁止;禁令,禁律
参考例句:
  • The prohibition against drunken driving will save many lives.禁止酒后开车将会减少许多死亡事故。
  • They voted in favour of the prohibition of smoking in public areas.他们投票赞成禁止在公共场所吸烟。
45 smuggle 5FNzy     
vt.私运;vi.走私
参考例句:
  • Friends managed to smuggle him secretly out of the country.朋友们想方设法将他秘密送出国了。
  • She has managed to smuggle out the antiques without getting caught.她成功将古董走私出境,没有被逮捕。
46 illicit By8yN     
adj.非法的,禁止的,不正当的
参考例句:
  • He had an illicit association with Jane.他和简曾有过不正当关系。
  • Seizures of illicit drugs have increased by 30% this year.今年违禁药品的扣押增长了30%。
47 outlawed e2d1385a121c74347f32d0eb4aa15b54     
宣布…为不合法(outlaw的过去式与过去分词形式)
参考例句:
  • Most states have outlawed the use of marijuana. 大多数州都宣布使用大麻为非法行为。
  • I hope the sale of tobacco will be outlawed someday. 我希望有朝一日烟草制品会禁止销售。
48 smuggling xx8wQ     
n.走私
参考例句:
  • Some claimed that the docker's union fronted for the smuggling ring.某些人声称码头工人工会是走私集团的掩护所。
  • The evidence pointed to the existence of an international smuggling network.证据表明很可能有一个国际走私网络存在。
49 concealed 0v3zxG     
a.隐藏的,隐蔽的
参考例句:
  • The paintings were concealed beneath a thick layer of plaster. 那些画被隐藏在厚厚的灰泥层下面。
  • I think he had a gun concealed about his person. 我认为他当时身上藏有一支枪。
50 mandatory BjTyz     
adj.命令的;强制的;义务的;n.受托者
参考例句:
  • It's mandatory to pay taxes.缴税是义务性的。
  • There is no mandatory paid annual leave in the U.S.美国没有强制带薪年假。
51 preyed 30b08738b4df0c75cb8e123ab0b15c0f     
v.掠食( prey的过去式和过去分词 );掠食;折磨;(人)靠欺诈为生
参考例句:
  • Remorse preyed upon his mind. 悔恨使他内心痛苦。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
  • He had been unwise and it preyed on his conscience. 他做得不太明智,这一直让他良心不安。 来自辞典例句
52 dealers 95e592fc0f5dffc9b9616efd02201373     
n.商人( dealer的名词复数 );贩毒者;毒品贩子;发牌者
参考例句:
  • There was fast bidding between private collectors and dealers. 私人收藏家和交易商急速竞相喊价。
  • The police were corrupt and were operating in collusion with the drug dealers. 警察腐败,与那伙毒品贩子内外勾结。
53 affected TzUzg0     
adj.不自然的,假装的
参考例句:
  • She showed an affected interest in our subject.她假装对我们的课题感到兴趣。
  • His manners are affected.他的态度不自然。
54 punitive utey6     
adj.惩罚的,刑罚的
参考例句:
  • They took punitive measures against the whole gang.他们对整帮人采取惩罚性措施。
  • The punitive tariff was imposed to discourage tire imports from China.该惩罚性关税的征收是用以限制中国轮胎进口的措施。
55 stiffen zudwI     
v.(使)硬,(使)变挺,(使)变僵硬
参考例句:
  • The blood supply to the skin is reduced when muscles stiffen.当肌肉变得僵硬时,皮肤的供血量就减少了。
  • I was breathing hard,and my legs were beginning to stiffen.这时我却气吁喘喘地开始感到脚有点僵硬。
56 deportation Nwjx6     
n.驱逐,放逐
参考例句:
  • The government issued a deportation order against the four men.政府发出了对那4名男子的驱逐令。
  • Years ago convicted criminals in England could face deportation to Australia.很多年以前,英国已定罪的犯人可能被驱逐到澳大利亚。
57 maker DALxN     
n.制造者,制造商
参考例句:
  • He is a trouble maker,You must be distant with him.他是个捣蛋鬼,你不要跟他在一起。
  • A cabinet maker must be a master craftsman.家具木工必须是技艺高超的手艺人。
58 lawsuits 1878e62a5ca1482cc4ae9e93dcf74d69     
n.诉讼( lawsuit的名词复数 )
参考例句:
  • Lawsuits involving property rights and farming and grazing rights increased markedly. 涉及财产权,耕作与放牧权的诉讼案件显著地增加。 来自辞典例句
  • I've lost and won more lawsuits than any man in England. 全英国的人算我官司打得最多,赢的也多,输的也多。 来自辞典例句
59 tainted qgDzqS     
adj.腐坏的;污染的;沾污的;感染的v.使变质( taint的过去式和过去分词 );使污染;败坏;被污染,腐坏,败坏
参考例句:
  • The administration was tainted with scandal. 丑闻使得政府声名狼藉。
  • He was considered tainted by association with the corrupt regime. 他因与腐败政府有牵连而名誉受损。 来自《简明英汉词典》
60 psychiatry g0Jze     
n.精神病学,精神病疗法
参考例句:
  • The study appeared in the Amercian science Journal of Psychiatry.这个研究发表在美国精神病学的杂志上。
  • A physician is someone who specializes in psychiatry.精神病专家是专门从事精神病治疗的人。
61 specialized Chuzwe     
adj.专门的,专业化的
参考例句:
  • There are many specialized agencies in the United Nations.联合国有许多专门机构。
  • These tools are very specialized.这些是专用工具。
62 advertising 1zjzi3     
n.广告业;广告活动 a.广告的;广告业务的
参考例句:
  • Can you give me any advice on getting into advertising? 你能指点我如何涉足广告业吗?
  • The advertising campaign is aimed primarily at young people. 这个广告宣传运动主要是针对年轻人的。
63 tantalizingly e619a8aa45e5609beb0d97d144f92f2a     
adv.…得令人着急,…到令人着急的程度
参考例句:
  • A band of caribou passed by, twenty and odd animals, tantalizingly within rifle range. 一群驯鹿走了过去,大约有二十多头,都呆在可望而不可即的来福枪的射程以内。 来自英汉文学 - 热爱生命
  • She smiled at him tantalizingly. 她引诱性地对他笑着。 来自互联网
64 persuasive 0MZxR     
adj.有说服力的,能说得使人相信的
参考例句:
  • His arguments in favour of a new school are very persuasive.他赞成办一座新学校的理由很有说服力。
  • The evidence was not really persuasive enough.证据并不是太有说服力。
65 convertibles 26c1636be56fe8e2e325981011f2a3e3     
n.可改变性,可变化性( convertible的名词复数 );活动顶篷式汽车
参考例句:
  • In Washington, the regulators did make a push to ban the manufacturing of convertibles. 华盛顿的各个管制机构曾经推动禁止敝篷车的制造。 来自辞典例句
  • That's why they drive around in half-million-dollar convertibles? 因此他们就不惜花几千万美元来这里居住? 来自电影对白
66 applied Tz2zXA     
adj.应用的;v.应用,适用
参考例句:
  • She plans to take a course in applied linguistics.她打算学习应用语言学课程。
  • This cream is best applied to the face at night.这种乳霜最好晚上擦脸用。
67 buffalo 1Sby4     
n.(北美)野牛;(亚洲)水牛
参考例句:
  • Asian buffalo isn't as wild as that of America's. 亚洲水牛比美洲水牛温顺些。
  • The boots are made of buffalo hide. 这双靴子是由水牛皮制成的。
68 guises f96ca1876df94d3040457fde23970679     
n.外观,伪装( guise的名词复数 )v.外观,伪装( guise的第三人称单数 )
参考例句:
  • She took pleasure in the various guises she could see. 她穿各种衣服都显得活泼可爱。 来自辞典例句
  • Traditional form or structure allows us to recognize corresponding bits of folklore in different guises. 了解民俗的传统形式或结构,可以使我门抛开事物的不同外表,从中去辨认出有关民俗的点点滴滴。 来自英汉非文学 - 民俗
69 pharmaceuticals be065c8a4af3a2d925d11969faac34cf     
n.医药品;药物( pharmaceutical的名词复数 )
参考例句:
  • the development of new pharmaceuticals 新药的开发
  • The companies are pouring trillions of yen into biotechnology research,especially for pharmaceuticals and new seeds. 这些公司将大量资金投入生物工艺学研究,尤其是药品和新种子方面。 来自《简明英汉词典》
70 innovative D6Vxq     
adj.革新的,新颖的,富有革新精神的
参考例句:
  • Discover an innovative way of marketing.发现一个创新的营销方式。
  • He was one of the most creative and innovative engineers of his generation.他是他那代人当中最富创造性与革新精神的工程师之一。
71 seduce ST0zh     
vt.勾引,诱奸,诱惑,引诱
参考例句:
  • She has set out to seduce Stephen.她已经开始勾引斯蒂芬了。
  • Clever advertising would seduce more people into smoking.巧妙策划的广告会引诱更多的人吸烟。
72 endorsement ApOxK     
n.背书;赞成,认可,担保;签(注),批注
参考例句:
  • We are happy to give the product our full endorsement.我们很高兴给予该产品完全的认可。
  • His presidential campaign won endorsement from several celebrities.他参加总统竞选得到一些社会名流的支持。
73 mantle Y7tzs     
n.斗篷,覆罩之物,罩子;v.罩住,覆盖,脸红
参考例句:
  • The earth had donned her mantle of brightest green.大地披上了苍翠欲滴的绿色斗篷。
  • The mountain was covered with a mantle of snow.山上覆盖着一层雪。
74 sketchy ZxJwl     
adj.写生的,写生风格的,概略的
参考例句:
  • The material he supplied is too sketchy.他提供的材料过于简略。
  • Details of what actually happened are still sketchy.对于已发生事实的详细情况知道的仍然有限。
75 alley Cx2zK     
n.小巷,胡同;小径,小路
参考例句:
  • We live in the same alley.我们住在同一条小巷里。
  • The blind alley ended in a brick wall.这条死胡同的尽头是砖墙。
76 skeptical MxHwn     
adj.怀疑的,多疑的
参考例句:
  • Others here are more skeptical about the chances for justice being done.这里的其他人更为怀疑正义能否得到伸张。
  • Her look was skeptical and resigned.她的表情是将信将疑而又无可奈何。
77 derived 6cddb7353e699051a384686b6b3ff1e2     
vi.起源;由来;衍生;导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 );(从…中)得到获得;源于;(从…中)提取
参考例句:
  • Many English words are derived from Latin and Greek. 英语很多词源出于拉丁文和希腊文。 来自《简明英汉词典》
  • He derived his enthusiasm for literature from his father. 他对文学的爱好是受他父亲的影响。 来自《简明英汉词典》
78 relatively bkqzS3     
adv.比较...地,相对地
参考例句:
  • The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
  • The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。
79 transcripts 525c0b10bb61e5ddfdd47d7faa92db26     
n.抄本( transcript的名词复数 );转写本;文字本;副本
参考例句:
  • Like mRNA, both tRNA and rRNA are transcripts of chromosomal DNA. tRNA及rRNA同mRNA一样,都是染色体DNA的转录产物。 来自辞典例句
  • You can't take the transfer students'exam without your transcripts. 没有成绩证明书,你就不能参加转学考试。 来自辞典例句
80 extraordinarily Vlwxw     
adv.格外地;极端地
参考例句:
  • She is an extraordinarily beautiful girl.她是个美丽非凡的姑娘。
  • The sea was extraordinarily calm that morning.那天清晨,大海出奇地宁静。
81 resistant 7Wvxh     
adj.(to)抵抗的,有抵抗力的
参考例句:
  • Many pests are resistant to the insecticide.许多害虫对这种杀虫剂有抵抗力。
  • They imposed their government by force on the resistant population.他们以武力把自己的统治强加在持反抗态度的人民头上。
82 robustly 507ac3bec7e7c48e608da00e709f9006     
adv.要用体力地,粗鲁地
参考例句:
  • These three hormones also robustly stimulated thymidine incorporation and inhibited drug-induced apoptosis. 并且这三种激素有利于胸(腺嘧啶脱氧核)苷掺入和抑制药物诱导的细胞凋亡。 来自互联网
  • The economy is still growing robustly, but inflation, It'seems, is back. 经济依然强劲增长,但是通胀似乎有所抬头。 来自互联网
83 dominant usAxG     
adj.支配的,统治的;占优势的;显性的;n.主因,要素,主要的人(或物);显性基因
参考例句:
  • The British were formerly dominant in India.英国人从前统治印度。
  • She was a dominant figure in the French film industry.她在法国电影界是个举足轻重的人物。
84 radical hA8zu     
n.激进份子,原子团,根号;adj.根本的,激进的,彻底的
参考例句:
  • The patient got a radical cure in the hospital.病人在医院得到了根治。
  • She is radical in her demands.她的要求十分偏激。
85 margins 18cef75be8bf936fbf6be827537c8585     
边( margin的名词复数 ); 利润; 页边空白; 差数
参考例句:
  • They have always had to make do with relatively small profit margins. 他们不得不经常设法应付较少的利润额。
  • To create more space between the navigation items, add left and right margins to the links. 在每个项目间留更多的空隙,加左或者右的margins来定义链接。
86 mainstream AoCzh9     
n.(思想或行为的)主流;adj.主流的
参考例句:
  • Their views lie outside the mainstream of current medical opinion.他们的观点不属于当今医学界观点的主流。
  • Polls are still largely reflects the mainstream sentiment.民调还在很大程度上反映了社会主流情绪。
87 arsenal qNPyF     
n.兵工厂,军械库
参考例句:
  • Even the workers at the arsenal have got a secret organization.兵工厂工人暗中也有组织。
  • We must be the great arsenal of democracy.我们必须成为民主的大军火库。
88 mechanism zCWxr     
n.机械装置;机构,结构
参考例句:
  • The bones and muscles are parts of the mechanism of the body.骨骼和肌肉是人体的组成部件。
  • The mechanism of the machine is very complicated.这台机器的结构是非常复杂的。
89 initially 273xZ     
adv.最初,开始
参考例句:
  • The ban was initially opposed by the US.这一禁令首先遭到美国的反对。
  • Feathers initially developed from insect scales.羽毛最初由昆虫的翅瓣演化而来。
90 reluctance 8VRx8     
n.厌恶,讨厌,勉强,不情愿
参考例句:
  • The police released Andrew with reluctance.警方勉强把安德鲁放走了。
  • He showed the greatest reluctance to make a reply.他表示很不愿意答复。
91 bias 0QByQ     
n.偏见,偏心,偏袒;vt.使有偏见
参考例句:
  • They are accusing the teacher of political bias in his marking.他们在指控那名教师打分数有政治偏见。
  • He had a bias toward the plan.他对这项计划有偏见。
92 ethnic jiAz3     
adj.人种的,种族的,异教徒的
参考例句:
  • This music would sound more ethnic if you played it in steel drums.如果你用钢鼓演奏,这首乐曲将更具民族特色。
  • The plan is likely only to aggravate ethnic frictions.这一方案很有可能只会加剧种族冲突。
93 geographic tgsxb     
adj.地理学的,地理的
参考例句:
  • The city's success owes much to its geographic position. 这座城市的成功很大程度上归功于它的地理位置。 来自《简明英汉词典》
  • Environmental problems pay no heed to these geographic lines. 环境问题并不理会这些地理界限。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法
94 alleged gzaz3i     
a.被指控的,嫌疑的
参考例句:
  • It was alleged that he had taken bribes while in office. 他被指称在任时收受贿赂。
  • alleged irregularities in the election campaign 被指称竞选运动中的不正当行为
95 purporting 662e1eb2718c2773c723dc9acb669891     
v.声称是…,(装得)像是…的样子( purport的现在分词 )
参考例句:
  • Cindy Adams (Columnist) : He's purporting to be Mother Teresa. 辛迪?亚当斯(专栏作家):他无意成为德兰修女。 来自互联网
  • To prohibit certain practices purporting to be sales by auction. 本条例旨在对看来是以拍卖方式作出的售卖中某些行为予以禁止。 来自互联网
96 corporate 7olzl     
adj.共同的,全体的;公司的,企业的
参考例句:
  • This is our corporate responsibility.这是我们共同的责任。
  • His corporate's life will be as short as a rabbit's tail.他的公司的寿命是兔子尾巴长不了。
97 improper b9txi     
adj.不适当的,不合适的,不正确的,不合礼仪的
参考例句:
  • Short trousers are improper at a dance.舞会上穿短裤不成体统。
  • Laughing and joking are improper at a funeral.葬礼时大笑和开玩笑是不合适的。
98 alleges 3b19fc4aac03cd2333e7882df795ffc4     
断言,宣称,辩解( allege的第三人称单数 )
参考例句:
  • The newspaper article alleges that the mayor is corrupt. 报纸上断言该市长腐败。
  • Steven was tardy this morning and alleges that his bus was late. 史提芬今天早上迟到的说词是公车误点了。
99 prescriptions f0b231c0bb45f8e500f32e91ec1ae602     
药( prescription的名词复数 ); 处方; 开处方; 计划
参考例句:
  • The hospital of traditional Chinese medicine installed a computer to fill prescriptions. 中医医院装上了电子计算机来抓药。
  • Her main job was filling the doctor's prescriptions. 她的主要工作就是给大夫开的药方配药。
100 legacy 59YzD     
n.遗产,遗赠;先人(或过去)留下的东西
参考例句:
  • They are the most precious cultural legacy our forefathers left.它们是我们祖先留下来的最宝贵的文化遗产。
  • He thinks the legacy is a gift from the Gods.他认为这笔遗产是天赐之物。
101 dynamics NuSzQq     
n.力学,动力学,动力,原动力;动态
参考例句:
  • In order to succeed,you must master complicated knowledge of dynamics.要取得胜利,你必须掌握很复杂的动力学知识。
  • Dynamics is a discipline that cannot be mastered without extensive practice.动力学是一门不做大量习题就不能掌握的学科。
102 villains ffdac080b5dbc5c53d28520b93dbf399     
n.恶棍( villain的名词复数 );罪犯;(小说、戏剧等中的)反面人物;淘气鬼
参考例句:
  • The impression of villains was inescapable. 留下恶棍的印象是不可避免的。 来自《简明英汉词典》
  • Some villains robbed the widow of the savings. 有几个歹徒将寡妇的积蓄劫走了。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
103 desperately cu7znp     
adv.极度渴望地,绝望地,孤注一掷地
参考例句:
  • He was desperately seeking a way to see her again.他正拼命想办法再见她一面。
  • He longed desperately to be back at home.他非常渴望回家。
104 oversight WvgyJ     
n.勘漏,失察,疏忽
参考例句:
  • I consider this a gross oversight on your part.我把这件事看作是你的一大疏忽。
  • Your essay was not marked through an oversight on my part.由于我的疏忽你的文章没有打分。
105 byline sSXyQ     
n.署名;v.署名
参考例句:
  • His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
  • We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。
106 somber dFmz7     
adj.昏暗的,阴天的,阴森的,忧郁的
参考例句:
  • He had a somber expression on his face.他面容忧郁。
  • His coat was a somber brown.他的衣服是暗棕色的。
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