The mephedrone panic continues
The moral panic over mephedrone, or meow meow, or Clarky's Cat, or Slip Me On The Thigh With A Big Banana, or whatever you want to call it, continues.
This comes after the deaths of two men were trumpeted by our friends in the screamsheets as being definitely due to the deadly meow meow - yet still the final reports on the deaths have yet to be concluded. In the meantime, a dozen or so people will probably have died from taking heroin, their deaths and the misery for their families going largely unreported. But who cares? Who cares when there's a new bogeyman to scare the kids?
The Evening Standard did an interview with the Government's former drugs adviser Professor David Nutt the other day which I found pretty interesting. It began:
When two teenage boys and a 24-year-old woman die and a new - and, at present, legal - drug called mephedrone is the prime suspect in their deaths, parents inevitably panic.
So the last thing they want to hear is that, in fact, alcohol is probably more dangerous than meow meow, as mephedrone is nicknamed, and is certainly more harmful than a host of other recreational drugs, such as LSD, magic mushrooms, cannabis and ecstasy.
But this is the grim warning from fellow parent Professor David Nutt, the former government drugs adviser.
"For me, as a father with four children, aged 18 to 26, the drug that I know could kill my kids is alcohol. It is the drug that has caused the most damage to my kids' generation and I think we have got to be honest about that," says Nutt, sitting in a modest meeting room at the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (CCJS) - the independent charity, he jokes, "which is responsible for all this".
And it concluded:
These kinds of arguments prompt Nutt to suggest that "some sort of regulated use for MDMA or mephedrone where people, maybe in clubs, could have access to small amounts, safe amounts under guidance" would be better than the current system of banning drugs and forcing them onto the black market.
Presumably, if that is how Nutt feels, then he wouldn't object to his own children trying mephedrone in controlled doses. "If I found my children were taking mephedrone I would do as I always do and tell them the truth," he says.
He has the same attitude with all drugs. "I would say: 'If you get on to heroin, you are at real risk of dying. Heroin, crack and crystal meth are the drugs you really want to avoid and it would be very distressing for me to know you were taking those'. With alcohol I'd say: 'I know you drink but whatever you drink, try to do it in a way where you don't put yourself at harm'. And with other drugs: 'If you are going to use them, just be aware that the harm of criminalisation may actually be more dangerous than the drugs themselves'."
Does this candidness about drugs extend to his own experiences? "I've never tried it [mephedrone] and I've never tried MDMA. I've hardly used any drugs, I'm a bit weedy really. I'm an old man from a different generation. I hardly even smoked cannabis because I get wheezy, but I'm not against people smoking [cannabis]. And I do drink."
As the Government and Professor Nutt have found, the truth sometimes hurts. But there's far more to lose if people shy away from it.
A pity, then, that the headline was:
Because that really isn't quite what David Nutt was saying. I don't think he was suggesting that clubs handed out wraps of mephedrone as you walked through the doors; or if he was then I've got things a little bit wrong.
You might say, oh, but that's the line, isn't it? Can't have a story without a line. But I'd say: how about you treat your readers as if they have something other than cotton wool in that void between their ears, and you imagine they might be able to read what you've got to say without putting a trashy misleading headline like that on the top? Because you know what happens. When one does it, they all do it. And here's the Daily Star:
Though that has been superseded today with a slightly different headline, the slightly less sensational but altogether less grammatical:
Ah well. But the story is still the same, and the implication is the same: This man is saying that clubs should just just hand out mephedrone, like it's sweets. But it's not quite that clear-cut. Adults having access to mephedrone (presumably for sale) in a controlled environment is not the same as that bloke in the gents toilets with the aftershaves and packets of chewing gum handing you a packet of mephedrone with a cheeky wink. It's really not the same thing at all.
But that's how it works. Professor Nutt could have spoken eloquently for a day and a half about the dangers of alcohol or heroin, and the relative risks of mephedrone and other more panicked about substances, and the headline would still have been HE WANTS MEPHEDRONE HANDED OUT IN CLUBS. It's not just the search for the 'line', it's something else on top of that, too, I think; a need to be sensational in the midst of all this panic, to try and ride the wave of hysteria.
A lot of people, unfortunately, will have done just what the Star did: take the headline as the story, when it wasn't like that at all. Can't we have a reasoned discussion on these things? Must it always be a BAN in one pan of the scales or HANDED OUT in the other? Is there really nothing in between for a mature society like ours? Not if you read a lot of what's in the papers, there isn't.
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March 26th, 2010 - 12:36
It was a shame, but I still enjoyed the standard story, (which I linked in a footnote myself last night) and saw it actually as quite a nice way of drawing in an ‘appalled’ reader to what was a good interview.
I would hope it would run a bit like this (from the reader)…
‘Give it out in nightclubs?!, what sort of a twat is this guy….*reads*
oh erm, far less dangerous than alcohol…*reads more*
he actually sounds quite reasonable…*reads more*
I feel a bit stupid now.’
I mean clearly wishful thinking on my part, but if the headline drew people into reading the story, surely they must have finished it better educated than they started?
March 26th, 2010 - 12:44
Its not only is there this false dichotomy between “Ban” and “Handed out” – which is bad enough in itself – but there is also the implication that the “Ban” will somehow stop it being available. Which is why I guess they don’t talk about Heroin much – its “Banned” and therefore is presumably not available to the general public in newspaper world.
Instead of course the reality is that no ban in any country ever has stopped any substance being available ever – all it has ever done is drive whatever is banned underground, reducing the quality , sending the money in the hands of criminals and increasing the risk.
March 26th, 2010 - 12:45
Here’s how it will play out
-The Government will ban mephedrone in the face of a media frenzy, in spite of there being no conclusive proof that it kills.
-People will still buy the drug, but illegally and cut with, say, rat posion.
-People WILL start to die from these dodgily cut drugs.
-The hysterical media will take this as proof that they were right all along, ignoring the fact that their crusade drove the drug underground and made it deadlier than it ever may have been.
How long before we get a Meow Meow Leah Betts picture?
March 26th, 2010 - 12:52
…when we all know he actually would prefer MDMA “handed out”, since as he rightly says, there’s a century of various levels of use and experience of it.
Check out the BBC in Northern Ireland too, there’s been three or four stories – it seems every family has had someone die of Meph-deph in the last week and now their Assembly wants some kind of “independent authority who would be tasked with regulating the import, production and sale of all psychoactive substances other than those that are currently covered by existing legislation.”
Oh, and the ban has to start yesterday so there’s no stockpiling too.
#voteNo2010 !
March 26th, 2010 - 12:54
I love reading about the increasing craziness regarding mephedrone in the papers.
I don’t know if you’ll be interested, but I have a couple of interviews on my blog with people who know what they’re talking about regarding it – http://shinybiscuit.blogspot.com
As a drugs nerd I’m baffled and bemused by the constant fatuous remarks printed ready for people unfamiliar with drugs to absorb and take as solid fact. That it’s made from plant food? A total mistake – I felt I had to ring up west yorkshire police yesterday to inform them that half the facts on a recent press release about meph were in fact misinformation. They were sarcastic and patronising, but at least I tried to set the right.
Sigh.
Great post btw
March 26th, 2010 - 13:10
I don’t know about you but all this coverage is making me want to take some, they are building it up and more people will want to take it, the idiots.
March 26th, 2010 - 13:38
Curious – your headline reminded me to check some early hysteria stories I’d bookmarked via Twitter using the #MephPanic hashtag, but for some reason the search only throws up the most recent.
Anyhow, an interesting article on an interesting interview. At the end you asked:
“Is there really nothing in between for a mature society like ours? Not if you read a lot of what’s in the papers, there isn’t.”
At first I thought ‘Well, we’re not really that mature a society given all the SHOUTY SCARE AND HYPE knocking around this’, but then I thought about how I’d caught a discussion about mephedrone on Five’s ‘The Wright Stuff’, in which Matthew Kelly said he didn’t believe all these police stories about ripping off one’s own scrotum, Anne Diamond said she’d rather her kids took ecstacy than meph because at least that was relatively well known and understood, and Wright himself pointed out that enjoying getting fucked up isn’t really that unusual, nor does it mean you’re going to be a lifelong junkie.
In other words, perfectly reasonable, common sense opinions being aired on a mainstream current affairs show.
March 26th, 2010 - 23:32
“mainstream current affairs show” Really? ‘The Wright Stuff. I must have missed that five minutes in 10 years! Fair point about the common sense though…
April 1st, 2010 - 15:08
It’s just a shame there aren’t more shows with common sense discussions like “The Wright Stuff”- it’s probably the only show I’ve ever watched where the host has actually changed his opinion about the topic after hearing what his panel and the audience have to say.
March 26th, 2010 - 13:51
‘Hand out’ is one of those weird tabloid-ese turns of phrase that means ‘make available’ in any way.
Passports get handed out, suggesting condoms be made available in places younger teenagers go means you’re suggesting condoms are handed out to children, and police making ‘no carol singers please’ cards that you can pick up from the police station becomes police handing out cards to ban Christmas.
And that’s before we get on to the tabloid-ese maning of ‘ban’, which would be handing out a whole new kettle of fish.
March 26th, 2010 - 13:57
The whole reason Bubble Luvs/mephedrone and the assorted other RCs took off in such a big way was down to the Europe-wide clampdown on the chemicals used in the manufacture of proper MDMA. The ersatz ecstasy pills and powders that were then cobbled together were crappy, with horrible side-effects.
Demand for that certain kind of buzz didn’t diminish with the squeeze on production; the failure to meet demand with supply led directly to the enormous growth in previously niche RCs.
The desire to get fucked up doesn’t always need to be pathologised, and as has been shown disrupting supply doesn’t lead to people giving up the search for a nice buzz.
March 26th, 2010 - 18:46
Campaigns sell papers. It’s that simple, I fear.
March 26th, 2010 - 21:38
Although journalists write the main body of the story Sub-editors write the introductions, picture text and headlines. There is a good chance the journo who wrote this story had no control over its headline, even though it is their name on the by-line and so they will get the blame.
Often Subs are the ones looking for the line and running with the campaign.
This isn’t an excuse for the above nonsense but an explanation to why a story can be mostly good copy but topped off with a headline that is just insulting to the intelligence of the reader.
March 26th, 2010 - 22:35
I don’t get this BAN IT reflex. I keep hearing apparently intelligent people like John Humphries coming out with it all the time now, about all sorts of things (although maybe Humphries is just getting grumpy in his old age). But the way it’s wheeled out as a cure to all evils ever is baffling to me.
I don’t think people advocate it because they think it will solve the problem though – I think they like it because it communicates social disapproval; this sort of collective agreement that because we’ve BANNED something, that means we all think it’s bad, and anyone who steps over the BANNED line has violated this collective agreement and can be labelled a criminal, and we all know that they’re bad, right? Because only bad people, People Not Like Us, step over the BANNED line and violate the agreement that a thing is bad.
And there’s a very obvious, Trainspotting-esque stereotype when it comes to drug users, and I think people want to keep that very firmly over on the Not Us side of the BANNED line, because it’s a scary image. And to admit that drug control is a complex issue, and maybe certain illegal drugs should be legalised and regulated (and that maybe alcohol abuse is much more prevalent and dangerous than we’d like to admit, and maybe it isn’t as simple as SCARY DRUGS BAD LET’S BAN THEM AND BE SAFE, but alcohol is lovely and legal) is a tricky thing to do, and certainly beyond those in the press who like to make hay from Scary Drugs Stories whilst pretending that they’re only doing it because they’re socially responsible.
Which is all to say, as I often do on here, that it’s more complicated than the press like to make it seem, but they have a vested interest in keeping it simple.
March 27th, 2010 - 11:44
Agree with rwtwm here – I also felt the ‘shocked-and-appalled’ headline was there to get the rabid on board for what was really a very good interview indeed that was extremely balanced and well written. Despite the best efforts of everyone in authority, even in the dark ‘Livingstone is a terrorist’ Wadley days, the Standard has the occasional piece worth looking at.
March 27th, 2010 - 14:39
It’s an interesting idea. Maybe I am too cynical to believe it, though.
July 10th, 2010 - 10:01
sometimes it is quite difficult to recover from alcohol abuse. ;,: