Posts Tagged drug propaganda

Drug Prejudice

Posted by Joshua Bardwell in Consensual Crimes on September 10th, 2009

There’s a particularly nasty drug. It’s very addictive. It ruins lives. People steal from their family members and even resort to prostitution to get it. Eventually, it ruins your health and leaves you a shriveled husk of your former self, if you don’t overdose and die from it first.

In the 80′s, it was cocaine. In the 90′s, it was crack. In the 2000′s, it has been methamphetamine. If you go all the way back to the 30′s, it was marijuana (“Reefer Madness” anyone?). And good old heroin has had a long run as the premier addictive, life-ruining drug, of which we should all be particularly afraid.

Once upon a time, I realized that there was a particular drug that I had a very negative view of, when I had previously used a different drug, about which there was similar negative propaganda. Dear reader, I invite you to examine whether you may be in the same situation. Have you used cocaine or ecstasy without ruining your life? Do you think that users of heroin or meth are probably dirty, addicted drug-fiends? Guess what? Some of them think the same of you, while going on about their surprisingly non-ruined lives.

Once upon a time, I tried a drug that was supposed to be particularly addictive. After the experience was over, I decided it wasn’t for me, and I never did it again.

I’m done with drug prejudice. All drugs have potential for abuse. Some drugs are more prone to abuse than others. Some people are more prone to abuse some drugs than others. But no drug is guaranteed to ruin the life of everyone who uses it, and lots of people regularly use any given drug without becoming addicted or ruining their lives and/or health. And if there’s a drug out there that’s so addictive that one hit will suck me into a downward spiral of addiction and abuse, I haven’t found it yet.

Okay, maybe caffeine.

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Drug propaganda and swine flu

Posted by Joshua Bardwell in Consensual Crimes on May 25th, 2009

Sandro Galea is an epidemiologist who studies human behavior in public health emergencies. He’s the director of the Center for Global Health at the University of Michigan. He was recently interviewed on NPR about the public’s response to the recent media attention on swine flu. He said:

I think it’s pretty clear that a consistent, clear, but honest message about what is going on is essential. People realize that public officials may not know the answers to everything, but people react much better and have a much more predictable reactions when they know that they’re being told as much information as is available and that they are being given sound, sane advice. I think the one thing that we probably want to avoid is a cacophony of conflicting information from different sources, and possibly different information.

One of the problems with anti-drug propaganda is that it fails the test that Dr. Galea describes. The public does not believe that we are being told as much information as is available; we are being told often-exaggerated information about the harmful effects of drugs. We do not believe that we are being given sound, sane advice; we are being given hysterical propaganda. We are not receiving a “consistent, clear, but honest message about what is going on”; we are receiving a consistent, clear, message about what the producers of the propaganda would like for us to do.

This may be completely in line with the intentions of the drug-warriors.  The host’s question, after all, was what to do “if you’re trying to avoid panic, fear, or confusion,” and the goal of the drug-warriors is not to educate, but to create panic, fear, and confusion so as to influence people not to use any illegal drugs at all.

Which interaction would you prefer: one in which the person desires to give you as much information as possible so as to allow you to make a choice for yourself, or one in which the person desires to manipulate you into coming to the conclusion they desire?

You can hear the NPR interview with Dr. Galea at this link.

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