12th January 2016
9
Drugs
Drugs are vilified by the media: it’s time we challenged perceptions
Do you have friends who take drugs?
Ruth Elms If you ask where babies come from, you get told a lie. A swan carries it along, or you get them in Waitrose. But if you ask why drugs are illegal, you don’t get a lie or the truth, because no one really knows. I’ve probably taken Class A drugs once a fortnight, on and off, since I was about 17. I won’t go into the details of why I take drugs, or why I like them, but generally speaking, taking them gives me new lease of life, and I feel a deeper, more personal connection with the people I’m with than listening to them slur over “how many bloody essays” they have to do. The pure forms of Class A drugs, taken in moderate and controlled amounts, are hardly dangerous, and, according to David Nutt, the government’s former drugs adviser, they are “barely addictive”. The earliest drug vilification can be traced back to the US, with Black Americans being stigmatised on account of heroin use in the 1950s. In the 1960s hippies and psychedelics were targeted because they opposed the Vietnam war. This translated into a media hate campaign in the UK targeting drug use, masqueraded as concerns for the health and wellbeing of people, and in particular, young people. So, as young people seek out other ways to enjoy an ‘altered consciousness’ without experiencing the addictive and toxic nature of alcohol, the media seek them out as well, hoping to have them banned, with politicians in tow, highlighted by the introduction of the Psychoactive Substances Bill. This ban is predicated on more media hysteria about legal highs such as nitrous oxide and the “head shops” that sell them. Lies about the number of legal high deaths abound, with Mike Penning, minister for policing and justice, quoting 129 last year in the bill’s second reading. The true figure is about five, according to drugscience.org.uk, as the “head shops” generally now sell safe mild stimulants because, funnily enough, they don’t want their regular customers to die. The attack on nitros oxide is a weird one, given that the gas has been used to treat and numb pain for a long, long time. When young people are inhaling a nitros oxide balloon, then it’s a public health hazard, and once again the media helped to bring about the ban by helpfully renaming it ‘hippy crack’ – what could frighten the older generations more than hippies, on crack? This ongoing attack on drugs needs to stop or, at the very least, the media can’t be allowed to determine the drugs policy of the country because they fancy it. Some of my closes friendships have been made whilst using drugs. It’s difficult to describe without coming across as boastful, but drugs give you a far greater connection with the people around you. You’re more inclined to share common experiences, realise common understandings and, as a result, grow your friendship to greater levels than you previously had. Of course, drugs can be nightmare. It’s easy for me, someone who hasn’t had a bad experience with drugs, to harp on about their benefits. As a middle-class white person from a middle-class predominantly white area, who has never been stopped by the police and has a distant non-social relationship with their drug
Does it affect your relationship with them?
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If yes, how?
We are better friends because of weed. My friend has started injecting and using opiates and won’t listen when people try and dissuade him. Frustrated at the mess they make while high. Generally I find it builds a stronger bond with them although I feel more pressured among my friends who do not participate in drugs as I cannot relax or talk about it in the same way as I know they disapprove/don’t understand. Some of my good friends have started taking chemically based drugs like coke, Mandy (mdma), acid/lsd and cet. It bugs me because firstly they comment constantly on my spending habits but think wasting maintenance loans on some columbian baking powder is somehow fine. Secondly, I worry because they are inexperienced users so could get some bad stuff that will harm them beyond repair. Positively! I find MDMA is great for bonding with friends. It loosens social inhabitions in a way alcohol doesn’t! Don’t do drugs anymore. They annoy me when they do it, all they do is talk about it. Boring.
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I don’t feel that comfortable around them when they’re doing things that make them act unpredictably. They also seem too obsessed with drugs and spending all their money on them rather than actually doing stuff. It has effected our relationship very negatively, I don’t want to hang out with them as much, if at all. You just see a different side of people, get to know a bit more about them. Everyone’s always happy and looking out for each other. Even if it’s just the brain chemistry talking, you do become closer and more comfortable with others from then on.
dealer, I’ve never really had any problems. For many people, drugs aren’t something they can dip in and out of and separate from their lives. People entangled in the economic and legal realities of drugs – dealers, those convicted of possession, addicts – don’t have the luxury of my relaxed attitude. Until we stop pretending that getting high is inherently bad – that drugs can never be brilliant, can never enhance human experience for the better – then there can never be a truly open and honest discussion about drugs. As long as the media, with politicians in tow, dictate the drug law of this country, without proper scientific debate, then the benefits of drugs will never come to light, and their effects always villainised. Whilst it would be fundamentally wrong of me to sit here and say that nothing bad has ever happened as a result of drugs, it would also be wrong to say that drugs can’t touch and improve lives. What is needed is an honest look at how addiction can be avoided and treated, and an end to trial by media.
Do you feel under more pressure to take drugs since arriving at UEA