Death of the Princess of Wales

ACR204: Crime, Media & Justice Week 7: The War on Drugs Dr James Martin Senior Lecturer in Criminology How the media stigmatises illicit drugs and people who use them ● Conflating use of illicit drugs with inevitable harm, crime, abuse and/or addiction ● Using stigmatising and dehumanising language – e.g. junkies, druggies, addict, abuser, drug den ● Misrepresenting drug usage patterns and trends – e.g. ice ‘epidemic’ ● Promoting a false dichotomy regarding legal and illicit drugs – i.e. alcohol, nicotine, caffeine not seen as ‘drugs’ ● Misrepresenting the value of illicit drug seizures and the effectiveness of drug law enforcement What are the facts? 9 million Australians (43% of population) have used an illicit drug at some point in their lives 3.4 million (16.4%) have used one in the past 12 months Since 2016 usage rates have changed for: ● Cannabis (from 10.4% to 11.6%) ● Cocaine (from 2.5% to 4.2%) ● Ecstasy (from 2.2% to 3.0%)   ● Hallucinogens (from 1.0 % to 1.6%) ● Inhalants (from 1.0% to 1.4%) ● Ketamine (from 0.4% to 0.9%) Recent use of any drug 2001–2019 (AIHW 2019) (AIHW 2019) Lifetime use of an illicit drug (including pharmaceuticals), by age, 2001 and 2019 Methamphetamine Methamphetamine use has been declining in popularity since 2001 when recent use peaked at 3.4% of the population Recent use now sits at just 1.3% of the population Amongst recent users: ● 16.9% use at least once a week or more ● 16.4 % use once a month ● 29.9% use every few months ● 46.8% use once or twice a year Recent use of meth/amphetamines, by age, 2001–2019 (AIHW 2019) Categories of drug use ● Problematic: stereotypical drug use; regularly portrayed in media; characterised by excessive, harmful consumption, addiction, and criminal behaviour ● Non-problematic: functional drug use; recreational and non-dependant; not associated with increased criminality or negative life impact “Most drug users are not otherwise criminally active, and the vast majority of drug-using incidents neither cause nor accompany other forms of criminality”. (MacCoun et al 2003:65) Problematic users approx. 10% Non-problematic users approx . 90% (UNODC 2012:1) Background to the study ● Chief investigator – Professor David Nutt, Head of the UK Government Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs ● Panel of experts comprising: 16 eminent medical doctors, chemists, forensic scientists, criminologists, psychologists ● Intended to create an objective scale for measuring harms associated with illicit drugs ● Measured both harms to individual users and harms to others ● Each drug awarded different scores in each category to create overall measure Harms to users 1. Specific mortality – e.g. fatal overdose 2. Related mortality – e.g. HIV/AIDS, suicide 3. Specific harms – e.g. liver cirrhosis 4. Related harms – e.g. non-fatal accidents, unwanted sexual activity 5. Dependence – likelihood of addiction 6. Specific mental impairment – e.g. psychosis 7. Related mental impairment – e.g. long-term memory loss 8. Loss of tangibles – e.g. job, house, etc. 9. Loss of relationships – e.g. spouse, friendships, etc. Harms to others 10. Injury – e.g. car accidents, transmission of disease 11. Crime , including: ○ Acquisitive – e.g. mugging, burglary ○ Impaired judgment – e.g. vandalism, assault 12. Economic costs – e.g. sick days, lost productivity, imprisonment 13. Impact on family life – e.g. relationships damaged, child neglect 14. International damage – e.g. deaths in drug production zones 15. Environmental damage – e.g. toxic by-products, syringe litter 16. Decline in community reputation – e.g. stigmatisation of slum areas Findings and fallout ● Indicates that some legal drugs, particularly alcohol, are significantly more harmful than most illegal drugs ● Significant mismatch between perceptions of harmfulness and the actual dangers associated with illicit drugs ● Serious implications for drug policies ● Politically unpalatable – Professor Nutt was fired from his position as Chairman of the UK Drugs Advisory Council Why a War on Drugs? ● The contemporary War on Drugs was launched by US President Richard Nixon in 1971 ● Conflating illicit drug use with crime, disorder and threats from minorities created a moral panic ● In 1973 Nixon established the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to help coordinate federal anti-drug efforts ● Also established increased, mandatory sentences for drug possession Political entrepreneurship You want to know what this was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or blacks, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did. - John Ehrlichman, Nixon counsel and Assistant for Domestic Affairs The Australian approach ● Supply reduction – law enforcement targeting of drug distribution ● Demand reduction – education/ propaganda campaigns, rehabilitation programs, substitution (e.g. methadone for heroin users) ● Harm reduction – policies aimed at mitigating drug related harms without necessarily reducing consumption (e.g. needle exchanges, drug testing) ● Government funding overwhelmingly geared towards supply reduction despite high cost and low effectiveness (Wodak 2011) Drug detection dogs ● Dogs trained to detect minute levels of (some) illicit drugs ● False positives (i.e. no drugs found) in 64-85% of cases ● 97% of positives for small-scale possession ● Little deterrent effect - adaptation ● Significant harm (e.g. panic consumption) ● Phenomenally expensive - $2000 per hour ( Malins 2016) Things to think about… ● Illicit drug use and drug users vary significantly from pejorative stereotypes – vast majority is non-problematic ● Harms associated with illicit drugs also differ from public perceptions – many illicit drugs less harmful than legal ones ● Drug policy is expensive, ineffective and not grounded in objective assessments of the harms associated with illicit drugs ● Significant evidence that prohibition amplifies rather than reduces drug related harms for both users and the general public ● Media (mis)reporting is key to the spread of misinformation about illicit drug use and people who use drugs