Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Columbia University.
Departments of Psychiatry and Anthropology, New York University.
Med Anthropol Q. 2019 Jun;33(2):242-262. doi: 10.1111/maq.12449. Epub 2018 May 28.
New York City has the largest number of opioid dependent people of U.S. cities, and within New York, Whites have the highest rate of prescription opioid and heroin overdose deaths. The rise of opioid abuse among Whites has resulted in popular narratives of victimization by prescribers, framing of addiction as a biological disease, and the promise of pharmaceutical treatments that differ from the criminalizing narratives that have historically described urban Latino and black narcotic use. Through an analysis of popular media press and interviews with opioid prescribers and community pharmacists in Staten Island-the epicenter of opioid overdose in New York City and the most suburban and white of its boroughs-we found that narratives of white opioid users disrupted notions of the addict as "other," producing alternative logics of blame that focus on prescribers and the encroachment of dealers from outside of white neighborhoods.
纽约市是美国城市中阿片类药物依赖者人数最多的城市，而在纽约市，白人的处方类阿片和海洛因过量用药率最高。白人滥用阿片类药物的现象导致了一些普遍的说法，即归咎于处方医生、将成瘾定义为一种生物疾病，以及承诺使用与历史上描述城市拉丁裔和黑人使用麻醉品的将其犯罪化的说法不同的药物治疗。通过对流行媒体新闻的分析以及对斯塔顿岛的阿片类药物开处方医生和社区药剂师的采访——这是纽约市阿片类药物过量的中心，也是其最郊区和白人的行政区——我们发现，白人阿片类药物使用者的说法打破了瘾君子是“异类”的观念，产生了替代性的指责逻辑，将责任归咎于医生和来自白人社区之外的毒贩的侵蚀。
