‘Tough on Drugs’ is inherently flawed

In my university bathroom the government’s national “Tough on Drugs” strategy has funded advertising to warn against the harms of using ice. The advertisement depicts a young woman with unsightly abscesses on her arms and face apparently caused by the effects of substance use.

More of this latest campaign includes a television advertisement playing childlike voice-overs while running visuals of amoral adolescents selling their body; fighting with Mum; rummaging through a purse; and the most shocking of all, the closure of a body bag. Ideally these images are illuminating the innocence one loses upon entry into the world of substance use and all so succinctly illustrated in one advertisement: albeit inaccurately.

Do not confuse my contention; I am not suggesting that drug use is not harmful. There are many negative effects of taking drugs, but those which are the most prevalent and detrimental are virtually ignored by the current strategy. Psycho-social effects such as depression and peer group issues are common, but instead we are exposed to the uncommon extremities. The images presented in this political crusade are out of touch and unrealistic.

A lack of self worth does not stem from drug use - drug use stems from a lack of self worth. Political approaches to illicit drugs must target the root causes as opposed to the symptoms. We live in a society which seeks to find imperfection. Newspapers rarely run favourable articles about the younger generation. For the most part, the focus is on their apparent binge drinking, promiscuity, violence and school failure.

I remember as a child, I expected high school to be a time where my friends fell pregnant, developed eating disorders and drug problems, had their drinks spiked, were date-raped and ultimately attempted suicide. This stemmed from feature articles in magazines and papers persistently addressing these issues. The dramatic nature and high crime rates of Summer Bay, Erinsborough and Mount Thomas only perpetuated these common fallacies.

When media do offer us insight into the successes of our teens, they are framed in such a way that makes these young people look unusual for doing something well. These stories make the papers because their success is so unexpected that it is therefore newsworthy.

We are always looking for signs of “at risk” adolescents. Prevention campaigns must begin to look at the kids who don’t use drugs to gain better insight into why it is that some do. The issues that affect the self-worth of adolescents are not uniquely tragic in independence, but their potential long term effects most certainly are.

The inability to read, being bullied at school, relationship endings, perceived failures, lack of ambition, inadequate employment and unhappy living arrangements are so standard that the seriousness of their effects is often overlooked.

“Tough on Drugs” campaigns portray such inaccurate images that they can cause more harm than they prevent. The perpetuation of the drug user as the “other” - a different species to you and I - is marginalising those who are most in need. If we continue to construct drug users as the root cause of societal ills rather than societal ills being the root cause of drug use, then we are turning a blind eye to some important issues.

The current approach to illicit drugs addresses no real issues. With a federal election looming the Howard Government needs to justify why they put more focus on zero-tolerance as opposed to addressing the reasons why young people would abuse substances so excessively.

I do not want this to be confused with a counter argument of why one should not postulate a stance against drugs or why one shouldn’t apply zero tolerance: however, campaigns which ignore prevention and policies which enforce punishment must justify themselves rather than simply proffer rebuttal of their opponent.

I have no doubt that huge sums of money have been allocated to this crusade, but if the aim is prevention this lacks any nous. Scare-mongering and propaganda are an inept way to go about either education or change; rather, such an approach pushes an issue behind closed doors which only further forces it into the hands of criminals.

Through mainstream media outlets, the government have created irrational public fears as opposed to appeasing them. In 1995 we saw the beginning of an horrific media and moral campaign against heroin and its users. The weak men and women who were lured into its dark desires like Eve to the apple were dislocated and disenfranchised. Daily tabloids - particularly Melbourne’s Herald Sun - would have one believe that heroin caused crime, prostitution and addiction from the very first hit. Eventually this story tired as heroin killed fewer people and its unintelligible comparison to the road toll was no longer worthy of publication.

Media foci shifted from the “War on Drugs” to the “War on Terror” but as it turned out, the purported cause of the latter - weapons of mass destruction - were nowhere to be found. Eventually exposure of the oil war exhausted and the government needed to introduce a new metaphoric war to battle - the latest and greatest drug “epidemic”, methamphetamine. And so the headlines ran:

 “Elite” cops to crack ice (Herald Sun, 2007); Jail for ice-crazed thief (Herald Sun, 2007); Hospitals bear brunt of raging ice addiction (Sydney Morning Herald, 2007); Bracks declares ice war (Herald Sun, 2007); Call for national ice summit (The Age, 2007); Deadly ice scourge (Herald Sun, 2007).

Methamphetamine’s inextricable relationships with crime, psychoticism and moral misgivings have been firmly established in the minds of many. Ice is portrayed as a killer, a seductive drug that once surrendered to sends one on a downward spiral of addiction and depravity: a criminal created, a tragic life lost.

The most significant side effect of methamphetamine use is psychosis and this is where much of the current hype lies. While I do not deny that this is an effect of the substance, the idea that “ice-psychosis” is causing chaos and backlogging hospital emergency departments is dubious.

Ice didn’t start making headlines until as late as 2006; but when it did; it did so in a colossal way. Daily papers ran incessant headlines and then came AFL player Ben Cousins’ fall from grace and direct entry into an overseas drug rehabilitation program. He lost his identity as he became the “ice addict” rather than Brownlow medallist, footballer, son, friend or partner.

Just last week, NRL’s Andrew Johns was assigned a similar identity. It is framed by both government and media that drug use must be ubiquitous for it to infect our best sports stars.

To a degree, this is true. Drug use is ubiquitous, but it was long before these footballers fell by the wayside. Their public admissions have not suddenly posed a huge threat to the sanctity of society. As both Cousins and Johns demonstrate, problematic use is not always obvious. Students use amphetamines as it is often easier to obtain than an extension; doctor’s mainline heroin to relax on the weekends; and parents smoke the odd joint for a variety of reasons, but their activity is unobservable.

Various substances have reported to be at use in “epidemic” proportions over time and the drug fiend has likewise been compared to and consequently literalised to be the carter of illness and contagion. Illicit drugs represent dirt, deviance, danger and disease and these are the antithesis of puritan thought which the body’s boundaries cannot cross. Such pervasive beliefs quite literally ignore the reality that many functioning, employed and successful people have a weekend dabble without recognition.

Despite the presentation of drug use and addiction as a problem of the poor, the reality is that many escape unnoticed as they are able to finance their habits through legitimate means. The public are led to believe that users are outwardly visible like that of the abscessed girl, the thieving young man, the homeless adolescent or the street-based sex-worker, but it is commonly known that illicit drugs are a multi-million dollar industry. How is it that the government can base their policy and campaigns on the notion that it is the former who are supporting the latter?

Substance abuse is usually symptomatic of something greater, which these advertisements fail to recognise let alone attend to. Thousands of people will engage in recreational use without stealing, prostituting, or overdosing. This does not mean that they do not have concerns in need of address. Many have underlying issues which explain their substance seeking behaviour and this is where prevention campaigns and funding should be concentrated. To prevent substance use, as a society we must stop ignoring or underestimating the pressures placed upon the young.

When I see this campaign in bathrooms and on my television I am sceptical about its motives and question how its efficacy is being measured. While it is much easier to believe that drug use is not a part of one’s community, the reality is quite different.

Drugs are not good and I certainly do not justify nor encourage the use of them; but I do maintain that the reasons why people do so despite this are often far worse than the pharmacological properties of the substances themselves. The fundamental flaw of the “Tough on Drugs” strategy is that it looks to treat the symptoms rather than the cause, and because of this the best that it can ever achieve is maintaining the status quo.