In the United States and elsewhere, many medicines legally require prescriptions, and none is allowed on the market without substantial evidence of its safety and efficacy. This situation reflects two major changes that occurred in the mid-twentieth century: first, the medical profession gained control over distribution of many drugs, inserting the prescriber between manufacturer and user; second, government gained regulatory powers over what drugs were allowed on the market, inserting itself between manufacturer and doctor. These changes were nearly simultaneous in the United States, occurring quickly between 1938 and 1951, and, as we shall see, they were intimately connected. However, even though these changes were to a great extent mirrored in the regulatory regimes of other developed nations, they were hardly automatic and inevitable.1 Rather, as I shall argue here, the politics of pharmaceuticals regulation were briefly linked to narcotics control in 1940s America in a manner that has been forgotten, along with potential regulatory strategies that were never tried.

中文翻译：

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控制“美国的鸦片”：战后美国早期的巴比妥类药物滥用、药品监管和公共卫生政治

在美国和其他地方，许多药物在法律上需要处方，如果没有大量证据证明其安全性和有效性，任何药物都不允许上市。这种情况反映了 20 世纪中叶发生的两个重大变化：第一，医学界控制了许多药物的分销，在制造商和用户之间插入了处方者；其次，政府获得了对市场上允许销售哪些药物的监管权力，将自己置身于制造商和医生之间。这些变化在美国几乎同时发生，发生在 1938 年至 1951 年之间，而且我们将看到，它们密切相关。然而，尽管这些变化在很大程度上反映在其他发达国家的监管制度中，但它们几乎不是自动的和不可避免的。 1 相反，