Basic HTML Version
December 2014 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| 17
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
Conference |
HIT – Hot Topics
‘The public has been
misled about drugs.
Why is this? It serves
a function. It allows
us to target people
who we don’t like...’
DR CARL HART
Our understanding of drugs is further skewed, Hart told the annual conference
in Liverpool, because scientific research only looks at drugs from one angle. He
said that America’s drug science body, the National Institute on Drug Abuse,
funds 90 per cent of global research on drug abuse. And the focus of NIDA’s
research is the pathology of drugs.
As a result, Hart said, there is a disproportionate amount of information in the
media about the bad effects of drugs, ‘creating an environment where drugs are
seen as evil and there is a focus on eliminating drugs at any cost’. Hart says
researchers fail to understand other aspects of drugs because their salaries
depend on failing to understand them.
‘The future is bleak if we rely on science to lead the way, because the story
that goes with the data is often distorted.’ He said the war on drugs had been a
success for the criminal justice and health industries, which have raked in huge
profits as a result.
But it’s not all bad, said Hart whose book
High Price
was published last year.
While admitting that providing attractive alternatives to drugs is ‘a big job’, there
is a way people can change the narrative and reduce the harm. He sees
decriminalisation and harm reduction as vital. Meanwhile drug users need to ‘get
out of the closet and admit their use’, as President Obama has done, in order to
normalise the use of drugs and get the debate into the mainstream.
*****
A MORE OPEN DISCUSSION ABOUT DRUGS
will reduce the levels of what one
speaker at the conference referred to as ‘intoxophobia’ – discrimination against
people who use drugs. Russell Newcombe from 3D Research told delegates that
while minority groups such as women, the BME community and gay people had
gained legal rights in the UK, drug users had not. Despite a lack of laws to
protect them, drug users are subject to discrimination across the board –
including by employers, doctors, the welfare system and insurers. Newcombe
suggested the government agrees to a drug users’ charter.
But as the long-time drug commentator Sara McGrail pointed out in her
speech, any changes to drug policy – despite the best intentions of the Lib Dems
in the last few months – are unlikely anytime soon. The drug issue, she said, is
not a vote winner, instead ‘it has been kicked so far into the long grass that we
can’t see the pitch anymore’. That drugs will be off the agenda for the next
election is a shame, said McGrail, because harm reduction has been ‘decimated’
and services have been cut at a time when austerity is preparing the ground for
potentially more problematic drug use.
Katy MacLeod of the Scottish Drug Forum said that research she has carried
out has revealed that it is among society’s most socially excluded people that
new psychoactive substances are gaining a foothold, not just young people.
Research at a Glasgow night shelter found nearly a quarter of its clients had tried
synthetic cannabinoids, although most admitted they didn’t like it.
Despite being class C substances, GHB/GBL are the ‘most dangerous drugs on
the planet’, according to David Stuart, substance misuse lead at 56 Dean Street, a
drug charity based in London’s Soho. He said the drugs represented a big danger to
the gay community, as did the use of other ‘chemsex’ drugs such as crystal meth
and mephedrone. Stuart said the emerging chemsex scene had necessitated a
need to create closer bonds between the fields of drug harm reduction and sexual
health.
According to Professor Gerry Stimson, one the biggest developments in drug
harm reduction in recent years has been the rise and rise of vaping. E-cigarettes
could, as some economists have predicted, overtake their deadly tobacco
equivalents in less than ten years. However, the success of vaping in reducing
the smoking population has been accompanied by familiar fears.
Professor Stimson showed delegates a recent Twitter post by the World Health
Organization (WHO) declaring that e-cigarettes ‘pose a risk to public health’. But
he said fears that e-cigarettes could be a gateway to smoking and undermine
government anti-smoking policy are reminiscent of opposition to clean needles
and foil for heroin users.
He said it would be ‘unethical’ for governments to deny or discourage the use
of life-saving products and said one of the ‘perverse’ consequences of over-
regulating e-cigarettes was that there are now higher controls and constraints on
them than on regular cigarettes.
*****
AT THE START OF THE CONFERENCE
, organiser Pat O’Hare told delegates that
now, almost all the taxi drivers he gets chatting to in Liverpool favour drugs
legalisation. He said this represented a swing in the public mood. ‘I never
thought in my lifetime we would see drug legalisation, but now I think we will.’
And few of those who listened to the final speaker of the day, Anne Marie
Cockburn, whose 15-year-old daughter Martha died last year after taking MDMA,
could deny that change is required.
She challenged the politicians who think current policy is a success to stand
by her daughter’s graveside. ‘Martha became another face on a newspaper. I feel
helpless when I see another death of a child. The law is past its sell-by date. I
want drugs to be legalised because I want safety first. Please help me.’
As Dr Hart pointed out in his talk, before he died in 1987 the gay, black writer
James Baldwin was marginalised for his views about drugs. He said no one
should be sent to jail for drugs, that anti-drug laws were laws against the poor
and that banning drugs did not stop people taking them. In fact, he said, lots of
money was being made on the back of the dope laws. After hearing the latest
evidence at this conference in 2014 it seems Baldwin, all those years ago, was
something of a visionary.
Max Daly is a freelance journalist and joint author of Narcomania: How Britain
Got Hooked On Drugs