First and foremost I do not want to attack the journalists that are writing these stories as we all know how much stress they are under for stories and the pressure heaped upon them to sell papers. I just want to put these outlandish stories into a statistical analysis.
In the same story about the two boys that tragically died there was also a paragraph highlighting that scores of young people were taking the drug. A direct quote ‘I don’t know anyone that hasn’t taken it’ A 16 year old boy. This suggests that it is massively widespread. Also take into account the News of the world’s story about Mr M-Cat that sells it to distributors by the kilo.
England, no doubt, is flooded with the stuff and most people I personally know have also taken it.
This is a massively high number, and I personally estimate that maybe 1 million people take it on a given weekend. (This number has not been given much thought so it is certainly up for debate) But even if 100,000 people a weekend take it I am still within an order of magnitude.
Using the much more modest number of 100,000 people a week to illustrate my point this makes it a million over the course of 10 weeks. M-Cat has been around for nearly 2 years so, for the mathematically handicapped blogger, lets call it 100 weeks. This is 10 Million instances where somebody could die on a given night when taking M-Cat.
Statistically, you would expect that on these 10 million nights some would die just randomly, just up and die. It does happen, it is rare, but no where near as rare as 1:10,000,000. Or, if we are being pedantic 3:10,000,000 (as three people have died whilst taking the substance) This is still well under what you would expect from random, unexplained drop deads.
It is extremely feasible that M-Cat had absolutely nothing to do with the deaths.
This is made even worse by the fact that it wasn’t just M-Cat that the people that died took. They also were on the heroin substitute methadone to bring them down fro the high. This means that if anything, it was a dodgy batch of, almost certainly non-prescribed methadone from the black market because they died after taking that the next day. Not from the M-Cat on the night they took it.
Still with me? Good.
Now, it isn’t even the death story that I have a problem with. It isn’t even moral panics in general. (Although look at the millennium bug scare – millions of public money spent because the press ran away with themselves and caused mass panic which then pressured the government to invest in preventative measures. Before you start arguing with me, saying that it was exactly these measures that made the ‘bug’ ineffective. I draw your attention to the more sensible countries that took no steps whatsoever and also, like us, didn’t come to a standstill)
We need to look at what is going to come of this scaremongering and media and public pressure on the government if it bans M-Cat (which it inevitably will in the next 6 months. For that, we need to look at a brief history of heroin)
Heroin
Heroin was once legal and could be obtained on prescription. Then, in the 1960’s a few doctors were caught selling it to patients. There was media uproar and then it was outlawed. The addicts (not many of them, hundreds rather than thousands) started to find new suppliers for their habits and a black market started to form on the simple theory of ‘supply and demand’.
By the 80’s people were still on it, but this number had risen as people were selling it to mates to fund their own habit, the demand grew.
There was then a huge government crackdown and more media scaremongering, the licenced psychiatrist sellers were made illegal and were given methadone as a substitute. Methadone is not popular with smackheads so the price of black market heroin grew.
There was now over 300,000 users addicted to heroin and they were robbing people for their fix, turning to prostitution and contracting diseases like HIV by sharing needles.
So let’s look at the costs – Police money to crack down on the addicts
- NHS money to deal with all the sickness from needles
- NHS money to deal with addicts who have had bad-trips
- The social price of all the burglaries and muggings to fund their habit
- A huge rise of addicts
This is all due to a media fallacy. Heroin is not even a poison. Before you get up in arms I say it is not a poison in it’s pure form.
‘conturary to popular belief it is difficult to kill yourself with (pure) heroin…The difference between a therapeutic dose and a fatal one is less than that of paracetamol – it’s most notable side effect on the physical, mental and moral condition of its users is constipation. The truth is that all the illnesses and misery and death that are associated with heroin are the result on, not the drug itself, but of the greedy black market criminals it is sold through as a result of the war on drugs’(Nick Davis 2008)
You may hit back with telling me about all the crime associated with addicts, but this is not a cause of the drug directly, it is because they are addicted and need to get the money to buy the drug. Heroin doesn’t make them thin, it is the money they spend on heroin rather than food that makes them thin.
I will say, that due to the fact it is extremely addictive is reason enough to not do heroin no matter how pure it is. And the same may go for M-Cat. But also to nicotine and alcohol and even coffee.
Back to M-Cat
So, the controversy around M-Cat is pretty similar to the heroin history lesson I and Mr. Davis have just relayed. And what has happened in history is a usually good indicator of what may happen in the future.
I would say that the government has no choice but to make M-Cat illegal now and I do not even blame them. It is the media that unscrupulously made a mountain out of a mole hill to sell papers which will cost society dearly when M-Cat does get outlawed.
As we know, people are taking it and they are not going to stop if it becomes illegal. The papers are also even advertising it as many youngsters wouldn’t know about the drug or where to get it if it wasn’t for the redtops. It is irresponsible, lazy and greedy for the papers to publish this at all. Even worse, this ploy top sell papers is veiled under a faux desire to protect this countries residents from something that has never been directly linked to a single death.
I could go on but I hope you get the message. Please post your views underneat
My mother often told me while I was growing up that ecstasy was a very safe drug and that it was in fact "nicer than other drugs" as it was relatively clean and tended not to encourage bad behaviour. She told me no one had ever died from using ecstasy.
ReplyDeleteI remember when the first person was reported as having died from using ecstasy, and I was very sceptical. Suddenly this drug that had been commonplace in certain circles and was no big deal had the whole country raving (pun not intended). As far as I can see the drug has only become less safe since then due to the fact it is harder to get hold of.
People, especially young people, need to be taught that drugs DO exist and need to be given accurate information on safety, not told (untruthfully) that they will kill you or ruin your life if you so much as look at them.
Thanks for the comment Ben. Very illuminating. I agree that young people should be taught about drugs. But also they should be told that people do it for fun. A fact that often seems to be glossed over by the press.
ReplyDeleteI am an English teacher in secondary school and a great book about drugs for kids is Junk by Melvin Burgess. It is a great way in for discussing 'taboo' subjects like drugs with young people.