Ecstasy is the drug of the '90s, but even though tens of thousands of Londoners use it every week, politicians refuse to take it seriously, reports Matthew Collin.Bow Road, London E3. An area fabled for illicit nightlife, organised crime, drug gangs and pirate radio broadcasting. By a low railway bridge on the left hand side of the A11 stands a huge advertising hoarding. The enormous black and white poster depic ts a smiling girl, with a single-word slogan: 'Sorted.' If you don't understand the street slang allusion or recognise the face, it's hard to tell what exactly its message means. If you look closer, there's a clue beneath the photo: 'Just one Ecstasy tabl et took Leah Betts'.
Every year since London's acid house explosion in 1988, the popularity of the drug Ecstasy has increased. And every year, there has been a resurgence of newspaper scare stories about deaths related to the drug. (The headline 'Agony and the Ecstasy' alo ne has been recycled hundreds of times.) However, the most recent of these moral panics, at the end of 1995, was a sign of changing times and attitudes. It was, in tabloid terms, a perfect scenario: pretty young English Rose, daughter of a retired policem an and a volunteer drugs counsellor, takes Ecstasy at her 18th birthday party in her parents' home, becomes ill, falls into a coma and - after a week on life support, allowing the hysteria to mount across acres of newsprint - dies. The response from the C onservative tabloid press was predictable: demands for police crackdowns, increased prison sentences, even new laws. But this time round, some journalists had been thinking a little harder about a drug that has become ingrained within the fabric of Britis h youth culture over the past eight years. Some of the broadsheets called for Ecstasy to be brought within the law, perhaps even decriminalised, as cannabis is in the Netherlands. This would help combat the misinformation that contributed to the death of Leah Betts, for the teenager perished not of an adverse reaction to the drug, or from heatstroke, as many dancers have done in overheated nightclubs; she actually died from drinking too much water, which was soaked up by the brain creating a condition kno wn as hyponatremia. Drug advisory agencies have long been urging ravers to drink water in hot nightclubs to counteract dehydration and potential heatstroke; this advice had become garbled and misinterpreted as it filtered down to the teenager who wrongly believed that water was some sort of antidote to Ecstasy. It wasn't just the drug but misinformation that contributed to her death.
Ecstasy has thrown easy preconceptions about drug abuse into disarray. Its users do not see themselves as 'druggies' or 'junkies'; as drug researcher Graham Wilkinson noted: 'Young people's attitudes to illegal drugs have altered beyond recognition in the past 10 years. For many young people today, spending money on drugs like Ecstasy is a way of life - as much a part of growing up as buying clothes or shoes. People who take drugs like Ecstasy don't even see themselves as drug users. In fact they are s cornful of people like heroin users.' The case of Leah Betts - it would be hard to find someone more different from the stereotype of the desperate, depraved addict - highlighted this.
The police and the medical profession have long been ahead of the game on this issue. Senior policemen realised years ago that jailing drug users was neither a sensible nor an effective way of stemming the drugs trade. People caught with small amounts of Ecstasy, cannabis or amphetamines are now regularly cautioned, not prosecuted, and many high-ranking officers have suggested that drugs should be decriminalised. John Grieve, Director of Intelligence at Scotland Yard, rationalised this attitude in term s of the sheer scale of drug use in Britain today: 'You are more likely to be offered drugs for the first time by a member of the family or a close friend than by the archetypal stranger at the school gates,' he said. 'When parents demand we arrest the de alers, it is their own children they are referring to.'
Manchester Chief Inspector Ron Clarke, a former drugs squad officer, once believed the police could eradicate drug-taking. His experience taught him that this was an impossible dream; the only sensible strategy was to attempt to avert potential harm; t o deal with drugs as a social rather than a purely legal issue. 'Let's have an Ecstasy off-license,' he suggested. 'Let's have a cannabis pub. If my lass decides to take drugs and E was her thing, I would hope that she could buy them properly in a bottle that said, "Take one and you'll have a good time, take three and you'll be in danger." I don't want anyone abusing their body, I don't want drug taking, I don't want my kids taking drugs, but at the end of the day the word is choice and if they do take drugs I want to make sure they're damn safe.'
The view taken by politicians could hardly be more different. Disregarding the advice of the police, Home Secretary Michael Howard railed against cautioning for possession, suggesting that penalties should actually be increased. While his stance can be seen as part of a wider narrative in which the police are increasingly used as a political arm of the Conservative Party, to prosecute political ends, as with 1994's ill-drafted, repressive and in places downright ludicrous Criminal Justice Act, it depic ts a political community out of touch with the concerns of youth in '90s Britain. No wonder the number of young people registered to vote is falling. And this self-serving, politically expedient and even dangerous attitude isn't confined to the Conservati ves. When Labour spokeswoman Clare Short raised the possibility of a rethink of the cannabis laws last year, she was swiftly hushed up by leader Tony Blair, frightened that his sanitised 'New Labour' party might be seen as in any way 'soft on crime'.
Ecstasy is the drug of the '90s, but no-one really knows how it works and what the effects of long-term use are. Small-scale human studies are now taking place in California, but apart from that, there is no serious research in progress. This weekend i n London, despite sweeping ignorance and misinformation, tens of thousands of young people will take Ecstasy, some for the first time. While the politicians continue to ignore the experts and set their face against any kind of investigation of what its re al physiological impact is, the scare stories and the deaths will continue.
Sorted? Hardly.
(Nicked from Time Out)
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