一家中國化學公司以及一場"浴用鹽"傳染病

There were times a few years back when the emergency room at SUNY Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse looked like a scene from a zombie movie. Dr. Ross Sullivan, a physician there, recalls one afternoon when staff wheeled in a man with dilated pupils who was covered in sweat.
在過去幾年裏有過好幾次發生在雪城SUNY Upstate大學醫院急診室裏的事就像一部殭屍電影裏的場景。 Ross Sullivan 博士是該醫院的一內科醫生，她回憶了那天下午當同事把一個渾身是汗而且瞳孔散大的男人推進來時的情形。

"The patient was screaming obscenities, and anybody he would pass, he was threatening and saying he was going to kill them," Sullivan recalls.
“這病人一直在罵着髒話，他威脅任何從他旁邊經過的人，說他打算把他們都幹掉 。” Sullivan 回憶道。

Police suspected the patient had taken "bath salts," the notorious synthetic stimulants that were ravaging scores of American communities at the time.
警察懷疑患者之前曾服用過一種臭名昭彰的人工合成毒品-“浴鹽”。在那時，這種毒品已經摧毀了大量美國社區。

It took 10 people to hold him down, and even then he was able to break a limb free. Eventually, they injected him with a sedative.
這需要10個人才能壓制住這個病患，即使那樣他還能掙脫掉。最終，他們只能給他注射鎮定劑。

"We probably used 10 times the dosage we would have used in a nondrug-induced person," Sullivan says.
“我們可能要對一個非藥物誘導的人注射10倍用量的鎮定劑，” Sullivan 說

An empty lab used by China Enriching Chemistry, which was accused of shipping illegal drugs to the U.S. Eric Chang, the company's director, is currently in jail in China, where he was charged with producing ecstasy.
圖中是上海燦禾化工有限公司一間空置了的實驗室。該公司被指控非法輸送毒品到美國。這家公司的主管Eric Chang，正目前因爲被指控生產毒品而被關在中國的監獄裏。
In central New York around that time, bath salts sent hundreds of people to emergency rooms for hallucinations, seizures, even heart attacks. But what most people didn't know is that some of the drugs wreaking havoc in New York state — as well as in Southern California, Virginia and Texas — were created thousands of miles away in a lab in China, according to a federal indictment.
大約那個時候的紐約市中心,上百人因爲“浴用鹽”所導致的幻覺，癲癇甚至是心臟病而被送往急救室。但是大多數人不知道的是，根據聯邦的控訴，一些在紐約州，同樣也在南加州，弗吉尼亞州，德克薩斯州肆虐的毒品，其實是在千里之外的中國實驗室創造出來的。

A Mystery Drug
一種神祕的藥物

When law enforcement in New York State first came upon the drugs, they couldn't figure out what they were. The ingredients in bath salts didn't test positive for heroin, ecstasy or cocaine. That's the reason they were marketed as a "legal high," and sold in convenience stores and head shops.
在紐約州，法律剛開始實施就碰到了這種藥物，人們不能確定這種藥物是否是毒品。因爲這種浴鹽沒有檢測出與海洛因、搖頭丸和可卡因相似的成分，所以它就被標爲“合法的興奮劑”在便利店銷售。（head shop是一種賣菸草、合法興奮劑商店）

James Burns, assistant special agent in charge for DEA operations in upstate New York, says that was by design. The chemists making the drugs were tweaking the formula so users wouldn't test positive for a controlled substance.
詹姆斯·伯恩斯是負責紐約北部禁藥取締機構運營的一名助理特工，他指出這件事情是某些人故意做出的。那些製作藥劑的化學家們改變了製作方法，所以用藥者不能檢測出受限的物質。

"It's damn clever on their part," Burns says. "It's been a real challenge to keep up with this stuff."
伯恩斯說：“他們真TMD聰明，趕上他們的步伐真是一種挑戰啊！”

Law enforcement in Syracuse got a lucky break around Halloween 2010, when police responded to reports of a woman who was on the porch of her home firing a shotgun at what she believed to be ghosts.
2010年萬聖節左右，在錫拉丘茲實施的法律獲得了可喜的突破。當時，警方接到了一起槍擊案的報警：一個婦女在她家的走廊上對一個她認爲是鬼的東西開了槍。

"Local police went into her house and they found 7 kilograms of what they thought might be cocaine and a shipping label from CEC Ltd., Eric Chang," says Assistant U.S. Attorney Carla Freedman, who prosecuted the case.
作爲這起案件的律師的美國助理律師卡拉·弗裏德曼說：“當地警方進入她的房子後找到了7公斤可疑爲可卡因的物質，並且這種物質附有一份上海燦禾化工有限公司的貨運標籤。”

CEC stands for China Enriching Chemistry, a small company with an office in Shanghai and a factory in neighboring Jiangsu province. Eric Chang is its director.
CEC代表中國燦和化學，一家在上海擁有辦公室在江蘇擁有工廠的小企業。其主管是Eric Chang.

The drug that police found in the woman's home wasn't cocaine, but a factory-made derivative of mephedrone, a dangerous, hallucinogenic stimulant.
警方在這位婦女家中找到的毒品並非可卡因，而是一種由工廠生產的、危險的致幻興奮劑甲氧麻黃酮衍生物。

The woman was part of a Syracuse drug ring that, police say, had ordered more than 100 kilograms of mephedrone from Chang, using his company's website and a professional courier service.
據警方稱這位婦女是紐約州錫拉丘茨販毒集團的成員，曾經從Chang訂購了超過100公斤的甲氧麻黃酮，使用他的公司網站和專業快遞。

Freedman says Chang was a shrewd businessman.
弗裏德曼說Chang是一位狡猾的商人。

"It was right there on his website that if your package is seized, he'd keep shipping till you get it," she says. "He was charging about $5,400 a kilo. His profit margin, we are pretty sure, must be enormous based on how much it cost to make it."
“通過其網站上，如果你的包裹被查封了，他會繼續寄送直到你收到爲止。”她說，“每公斤要價5400美元。我們十分確定，根據他所用的成本，其利潤率必定是相當巨大的。”

Big Business
大生意
"Eric was very friendly," says journalist Mike Power, the author of Drugs 2.0: The Web Revolution That's Changing How the World Gets High. Power got to know Chang over the phone and by email while he was working on an expose on mephedrone for the Daily Mail on Sunday, the London newspaper.
“Eric非常友好，”記者邁克·鮑爾說，他是《毒品2.0：讓世界變得更興奮的網絡革命》的作者。當鮑爾爲倫敦《每日郵報》週日版工作時，爲了揭露甲氧麻黃酮，通過電話和email認識了Chang。

A number of people had died in the United Kingdom from mephedrone, and Power says he was hunting for a kingpin. Posing as an online buyer, Power found Chang's contacts.
在英國，許多人死於甲氧麻黃酮，鮑爾說他當時正在追查關鍵人物。鮑爾假扮成一個網絡購買者，找到了Chang的聯繫方式。

A Daily Mail reporter based in Hong Kong went undercover inside Chang's Shanghai lab. Photos published by the newspaper showed squalid conditions. The floors were covered with dirty pieces of cardboard, and cabinets were splattered with orange chemicals.
一位來自香港的每日郵報記者暗中前往Chang在上海的實驗室。報紙刊登的照片展示了骯髒的環境。地板上覆蓋着髒紙板，櫥櫃濺有橙色的化學品。

Power says Chang came off as "an ambitious, successful guy that was driving an expensive SUV, drinking lots of Red Bull energy drinks. He was a very busy guy, living in a fancy apartment — complaining his wife never saw him because he was so busy."
鮑爾說Chang像一個“野心勃勃的成功男士，開着昂貴的SUV，喝下很多紅牛能量飲料。他是一個大忙人，住在花哨的公寓中——他的妻子抱怨說他太忙了從來見不到他。”

Power says Chang also appeared to be a big producer and showed him FedEx dockets of shipments to Europe to prove it. Power said he planned to order what he personally thought was a huge quantity of the drug, about 10 kilograms a month for two years. But, he says, Chang was dismissive.
鮑爾說Chang看起來似乎是一位大廠家並且展示了他寄往歐洲的FedEx的記錄聯來證明這點。鮑爾說他計劃訂購他自認爲巨量的這種毒品，大約兩年時間內每個月10公斤。但是，他說，Chang不屑一顧。

"He thought it wasn't particularly impressive," Power recalls.
“他認爲那並不令人印象深刻，”鮑爾回憶。

Shanghai has a big, legitimate pharmaceutical industry. Power — who never actually ordered the mephedrone — says factories like Chang's branched out into recreational drugs in response to orders from Europe. It was far cheaper to outsource chemical synthesis than to do it in the United Kingdom. Power says it seemed like a logical extension of multinationals offshoring the manufacture of sneakers and home furnishings.
上海有一個大型的合法製藥工業。鮑爾——並沒有真正的訂購甲氧麻黃酮——說類似Chang的工廠擴展業務接受來自歐洲的訂單。外包化學合成遠比在英國做便宜。鮑爾說，看起來合理的跨國合作，類似外包運動鞋和傢俱生產。

Investigators say Chang made around $30 million selling drugs to the U.S. and Europe. China banned mephedrone in 2010, but Chang remained free. American authorities say he shipped drugs to central New York as recently as February 2013.
調查員說Chang通過向美國和歐洲出售藥品，大約賺了3千萬美元。中國在2010年禁了甲氧麻黃酮，但是Chang仍然繼續。美國當局稱，2013年2月他開始向紐約寄送毒品。

Last year, Chang was named in a federal indictment in Syracuse. Without an extradition treaty, American authorities couldn't touch him, but they did tell the Chinese.
去年，Chang被錫拉丘茲聯邦政府起訴。由於沒有引渡條約，美國政府沒法碰他，但是他們告訴了中國政府。

Empty chemical drums sit in a deserted lab accused of shipping illegal drugs to the U.S.
空化學品桶 在控向美國寄送非法藥品的髒實驗室裏

Going To The Source
找到源頭

Last week, I went to Chang's headquarters in a mid-rise office complex near Shanghai Stadium. The lights were out. A bike sat parked behind an empty reception desk.
上週，我到Chang在上海體育館附近的中高層樓羣中的總部。沒有燈，一輛自行車停在空接待臺的後面。

I met his mother, Wang Guoying, who was working in Chang's office. She said policed arrested him last November. She also complained how hard it is running the company without him.
我見到了他的母親，Wang Guoying，曾在Chang的辦公室工作。她說警察去年11月逮捕了他。她同時訴說沒有他經營公司是多麼困難。

A staffer named Zhang Mingjie said the firm is currently selling anti-AIDS drugs to India, but a company brochure I picked up still advertised mephedrone. Sienna Tang, who handles exports for the company, said 20 cops raided the office late last year.
一位叫Zhang Mingjie的員工說公司目前在賣抗艾滋藥給印度，但是我撿到的公司宣傳冊依然在給甲氧麻黃酮做廣告。負責出口的Sienna Tang說去年超過二十個警察搜查了辦公室。

"I come here about 10 o'clock, so many people in this office," she said in English. "I'm afraid, just because so many policemen asked me [questions]."
“我大約早上十點到，已經有很多警察在這辦公室裏了，”她用英文說。“我很害怕，因爲許多警察都問我（問題）。”

Tang says her boss didn't tell her much about what she was shipping. "I just know the shipping name," she said, "but I do not know the exact material."
Tang說老闆並沒有告訴她她寄的是什麼。“我只知道運輸名稱（注），”她說，“但我不知道具體是什麼東西”

Chang's attorney says he's in jail now, charged with producing ecstasy. Shanghai police declined to discuss the case or explain why they didn't bust Chang earlier.
Chang的律師說他已經進了監獄，被控制造搖頭丸。上海警方謝絕評論這個案子或者解釋他們爲什麼沒有早點逮捕Chang。

Back in Syracuse, the situation has improved, according to Michele Caliva, who runs the Upstate New York Poison Control Center, which works with hospitals in the region. She says the state health department banned stores from selling bath salts and police cracked down on head shops.
回到錫拉丘茲，據米歇爾·卡里瓦說，他負責北紐約毒物控制中心，和該地區的醫院合作。她說，州衛生部禁止銷售浴鹽和警方摧毀出售毒品的商店後，情況已經得到了改善。

"The accessibility was really key," she says. "The fact that the average person could no longer just casually go in and buy it made a difference."
“可得性的確是關鍵，”她說。“事實上普通人不再能偶然進入並且購買，是有影響的。”

Caliva says the region still has serious drug problems, but by last year, emergency room admissions for bath salts — and stories about crazed users — had plummeted.
卡里瓦說該地區仍有嚴重的毒品問題，但是到去年爲止，因浴鹽進急診室——以及關於瘋狂的癮君子的故事——已經急劇減少。