Recent weeks have been awash with media anxiety over a series of 'new' drug crazes sweeping across the United Kingdom. First it was reports that university students are commonly resorting to using 'smart drugs'-- mostly Ritalin and Modafinil--in order to give them an edge in preparing papers and revising for exams. Then it was the identification of a mephedrone use epidemic amongst UK youth, initially spurred by an erroneous report that over 180 students at a school had missed classes due to consumption of the substance. In the United States, recent years have seen the rise in reports of Pharm Parties-- social gatherings where teens allegedly swap random prescription medications--and the great Jenkem scare of 2007.
There are some common themes in the way that these stories are presented. First, in every case, all of the reporting is primarily based on rumour, unsubstantiated anecdotes, speculation,or inferential interpretation of tenuously related data.
Second, in most of these stories--save for Jenkem--what we see is in fact quite an old phenomena being dressed up as 'new'. For example, university students taking substances in order to raise their levels of alertness is not a recent development. Nor is the social practice of teenagers congregating together for the purposes of taking drugs. Similarly, that people ingest substances that give them a rush is not a 21st century phenomena devoid of historical precedent.
Third, hyperbole is the means by which these stories must be conveyed. It is not just an exaggeration of the events, effects or compositions of the substances, and who is using them that is required. Rather the emphasis must be on what these activities are said to represent: a loss of ethics, hedonistic degeneration, corrupted youth, and moral decay. The consequences are then said to be eschatological --or in case of Jenkem, perhaps scatological?--resulting in the destruction of an entire social structure and way of life.
Fourth, given the outrageous claims that are being made and that many of these claims are devoid of any corroborating evidence, they all turn to linking the threats to children. And all children are not equal in these stories. It is important that white middle class kids be identified as at risk because those are the children we are supposed to really care about.
Fifth, the linking of particular forms of drug use with children not only catalyzes the reactionary safety impulse of parents, it also locates the threat in a world (i.e., youth culture) that is familiar but still somewhat alien, making the claims seem much more plausible than they might otherwise.
Sixth, while children and youth are identified as the principle actors in these stories, they are granted no degree of agency towards the provision of their own well-being. Instead, children are framed as objects in need of protection. This framing is important because the assumed inability of youth to make reasoned decisions immediately precludes policy options--such as evidence-based drug education initiatives--in favour of panoptic surveillance and draconian criminal prohibitions that do very little to address the public health aspects of illicit drug use or to prevent the recurrence of recent tragedies.
Analytically, what is interesting is the work that is done by the substances themselves to make these stories appear plausible. What is it about prescription medications that makes the practice of artificial stimulation that much more dangerous or unethical than downing multiple cups of coffee, energy drinks, or over-the-counter sleep suppressants? Why is mephedrone that much more pernicious than extreme sports or marathon running where preventable injuries and deaths are quite common?
There is also no acknowledgment of the social-medical context that may be contributing to contemporary youth drug consumption patterns. Given the increasing numbers of children who are being prescribed Ritalin and other drugs to make them more docile and compliant in under-funded classrooms (in 2005 over 23 million prescriptions were filled in the US alone), not only are many of these drugs more widely available, but a culture of regularized drug taking for the purposes of altering mood has been established. But acknowledgment would uncomfortably shift the source of the problem away from reckless youth or foreign producers to parents, teachers, and doctors who have been complicit in the construction of a brave new world.
So what can be done? Charlie Brooker may have it right. Rather than focusing efforts on prohibiting drugs, perhaps its high time that we banned tabloid journalism? Or, in the very least, the people responsible for whipping up fear and outrage ought to be held to account.
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