評論
打印
From the Editors
編者按
"THE FACT THAT HE’S STILL ALIVE MEANS THAT THERE’S HOPE," SAYS KRISTINA BARBOZA from her living room in East Wareham, Mass.,
“事實上，他要是還活著，就意味著還有希望，” 馬薩諸塞州東韋勒姆的克里斯蒂娜·巴爾博扎（Kleys KRISTINA BARBOZA）坐在她家客廳里說到，
50 miles and a world away from where her 31-year-old son Billy sleeps beneath a Boston overpass.
她家距離她31歲的兒子比利在波士頓天橋下離世的地方只有50英里，但如今兩人已經是陰陽相隔了。
In Huntington, W.Va., firefighter Larry Kishbaugh—haunted by the countless overdose scenes he has rushed to—has been diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder.
在華盛頓州的亨廷頓，消防員拉里·基什博——飽受被他抓住的無數吸毒場面困擾 - 被診斷出患有創傷后應激障礙(PTSD)。
Inside a holding cell at the Kenton County, Kentucky, detention center where drug users are left to detox,
在肯塔基州肯頓縣看守所的一間讓癮君子戒毒的拘留室里，
29-year-old mother Kayla Rauck wonders if she’ll ever see her children again.
29歲的母親凱拉·洛克想知道她是否還能再見到自己的孩子。
It is hard to fathom, and bitterly ironic: the depth of the suffering caused by drugs whose ostensible purpose is to alleviate pain.
讓人很難理解而且無比諷刺的是：表面上是為了減輕痛苦的毒品實際上給病人造成了莫大的傷害。
Statistics offer a partial view of the wreckage.
從統計數據中，我們也可以對其有所了解。
In 2016 alone, nearly 64,000 Americans died from drug overdoses—roughly as many as were lost in the entire Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined.
僅2016年一年，就有將近6.4萬名美國人死于藥物過量 - 越南戰爭，伊拉克戰爭和阿富汗戰爭加起來的死亡人數也不過如此。
The U.S. is the world’s richest country, and yet its life expectancy declined in both 2015 and 2016.
美國是世界上最富有的國家，但2015，2016兩年美國的人均壽命均有所下降。
More than 122 people die every day from syringes of heroin, gelcaps of fentanyl, an excess of oxycodone.
每天都有超過122人死于海洛因注射，服用芬太尼膠囊或者過量使用羥考酮。
Far more come close, but are revived by naloxone, a lifesaving antidote that has become nearly as critical to a cop’s job as handcuffs.
還有更多的人掙扎在死亡的邊緣，只不過被用納洛酮救回來了，納洛酮是一種能夠救命的解毒劑，對警察執法來說，這種藥品已經變得和手銬一樣重要了。
But numbers aren’t neighbors, and it is far too easy to become numb to their scale.
不過，數字不是鄰居，我們很容易對這些數字的規模變得麻木。
We are in the midst of a national emergency that affects every state, every income group and virtually every age.
我們已經陷入了一個影響每個州，每個收入群體和幾乎每個年齡段的人的國家危機之中。
While the burden has fallen disproportionately on the least-educated Americans,
盡管文化程度最低的美國人的壓力存在不成比例的下降現象，
tens of millions of us are no more than one degree of separation from someone struggling with addiction.
但我們中間的無數人和那些在毒癮中掙扎的人的差距不過毫厘之間。
As Walter Bender, a deputy sheriff in Montgomery County, Ohio, put it, "It reaches every part of society: blue collar, white collar, it reaches everybody."
正如俄亥俄州蒙哥馬利縣的副警長瓦爾特·本德所說：“毒品已經滲入了社會各個角落：無論你是藍領，還是白領，每個人都可能受到影響。”
譯文由可可原創，僅供學習交流使用，未經許可請勿轉載。
