HIGH SOCIETY

When it comes to illegal drugs, it seems as a nation we’re engaged in double-think. Tony Blair’s Government is pursuing a zero-tolerance policy, yet Noel Gallagher gets invited to Downing Street. Official Britain just says no, yet mainstream business is courting the stoned pound.

See
UK Drug Tsar Completes Americanization
By Becoming Utterly Incoherent On Why Marijuana Is Not A "Soft Drug"
and
UK Drug Tsar Becoming A Leftwing Bill Bennett;
Combining Puritanism, Irrationality and Class War -- 2 Articles
and
London Times And UK Drug Tsar Follow DEAland Party Line; UK Drug Use "Worst In Europe"
So Marijuana To Be Lumped With Heroin In Prohibitionist Propaganda For Children;
And Lie About the Dutch, Of Course! -- 4 Articles

But despite the Drug Tsar conjuring up images of cannabis "zombies" and Tony Blair insisting last year that the government would "fight against the evil of drugs", the reality is that more people from all age groups are using more illegal drugs than ever before. And they are becoming mainstream. The Prime Minister had no problem sharing a laugh with Noel Gallagher, the man who said drug-taking is no more unusual than having a cup of tea, at Number Ten. Last year, a national newspaper, the Independent on Sunday, ran a high-profile campaign to legalise cannabis. And, most surprising of all, big business is merrily using drug imagery to fuel its advertising campaigns.

So doesn’t Keith Hellawell ever feel that he’s got the nation’s youth sticking two fingers up at him? "I’m a positive individual," he says, laughing.

Despite the government health warnings, drug culture has entered the mainstream to the extent that illicit turn-ons such as cannabis, amphetamines and Ecstasy are no longer confined to the trendy end of club culture. They’ve gone high street. And even the Drugs Tsar himself recognises that recreational drug use in Britain is becoming all-pervasive. "Yes, I think what we are finding is the normalisation of drug taking," he admits.

The statistics demonstrate that he could hardly say otherwise. According to Home Office figures almost half the population of Britain aged between 16 and 29 has either smoked a joint, taken speed, dropped an "E", supped magic mushroom tea or tripped on acid. The Government’s estimates also reveal two million regular cannabis smokers of all ages, and seven million people have tried it.

These figures are widely regarded as conservative. An estimated 300 million illegal drug deals a year take place in London alone. New independent research based on a five-year study of ordinary young people from conventional families in the Northwest shows 64 per cent or their sample trying drugs by the age of 18. Ten years ago this figure would have been 20 per cent at the most. The authors estimate that there are now anything up to 1.8 million drug experimenters in the 15-19 age bracket alone.

"Young people say they can get hold of any drug, any time," says Howard Parker, one of the co-authors of the book Illegal Leisure. "They won’t talk about it because their parents will think they’re going to die. But in our survey we found their drug-taking wasn’t street corner or sub-culture behaviour."

As dance music and clubs have moved mainstream, so have the drugs - to the extent that the two are now pretty much inseparable. For youth culture read drug culture. The stereotypes of the infecting junkie, the mad-eyed raver downing Ecstasy and collapsing, the city whizz kids with bleeding noses, or the bonged-out hippy no longer apply.

Today’s average drug takers are very average. They will be people like the on-in-three junior doctors who use cannabis, as reported in The Lancet medical journal recently, or the four traffic wardens from London’s Camden Town caught smoking cannabis in their lunch hour last year.

(Marijuananews note: Does the Drug Tsar expect anyone to believe that one third of UK medical students are zombies? Follow this line: One third of young doctors use cannabis. The Tsar says that cannabis is a hard drug, like heroin. Therefore doctors have proven that heroin is safe for young people to use. This is the "message" that the Tsar is sending to British youth. He is a public health menace.)

They’ll be footballers ("Players are turning out on cocaine, cannabis and all sorts of funny tablets," remarked Ron Atkinson when he was promoting his book A Different Ballgame last year), they’ll be fishermen, builders, hairdressers and stock-brokers (identified last September as likely users of amphetamines at the first annual conference on stimulants).

Even when Blue Peter presenter Richard Bacon was caught snorting cocaine, the affair was met - despite his inevitably losing his job - with sniggers rather than scandal. DJ Chris Evans famously demanded on his Virgin Radio show that the BBC should reinstate Bacon or "get rid of everybody else who takes cocaine".

It may be likely, in any case, that schoolchildren listening to his programme wouldn’t receive similar punishment. One school head, Alan Wright of the 5,000 pound-a-year Bolton School, said: "We became increasingly concerned that if we were to expel them [drug takers] on every occasion, we would not be fairly reflecting present times." Other heads, of course, might view it differently.

"It’s mainly about young people experimenting and taking drugs because they are good fun," says Mike Linnell of Lifeline, Manchester’s pioneering narcotics information and advice service. "Some will get into problems, but most will come to no harm. They’re taking drugs as part of their leisure activity and are normal in any other way." They are also very unlikely to get prosecuted. The odds of getting arrested for smoking cannabis in the UK are currently 50,000 to 1.

According to Lifeline’s research, users will know about the dangers of their drug of choice , will come from a functioning family and will either be in work or in further education. Many now believe that addiction is linked to a variety of environmental and social factors which the Government’s New Strategy is talking about addressing through treatment programmes rather than punishment.

Perhaps the biggest shift of all is that today’s recreational drug users also tend to have large disposable incomes. They’ve become a new market which big business is eager to tap. And big business tends not to miss a trick.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) which monitors print and poster advertising, and the Independent Television Commission (ITC) are receiving an ever-increasing number of complaints about the drug connotations in promotional campaigns. British cycle manufacturer Raleigh recently had an ad running on hoardings and in magazines for its new Max Zero G model. Among others in the series, it showed a girl riding a bike underwater with an elephant swimming above. "What’s she on?" screamed the wording. Some great psychedelics perhaps.

"No, absolutely not. A drug connotation was not our intention, and definitely not something we could or would condone at all," insists Dave Edwards, group product manager at Raleigh. "For us it was purely a double-meaning - "What’s she on?" as in what’s she riding and, secondly, because she’s in an extremely unusual situation." The ASA did receive complaints, but gave Raleigh the benefit of the doubt.

Bring on Unilever, one of the world’s biggest corporations and manufacturer of family products such as PG Tips and Persil. Its parent company, Lever Brothers, was one of numerous outfits which sent a representative to a Business in the Community anti-drugs conference just before Christmas. One of its brands, Faberge, is currently pushing two perfumes on to the club-culture market. The first, Addiction "pour homme" was promoted with a series of ads in glossy lifestyle magazines based on the theme of the "First Signs of Addiction : High temperature. Mood swings. Loss of appetite. Dilated pupils. Trembling hands. Dreamlike state."

Their second perfume is Fusion, which was promoted by an advert showing a DJ holding out a piece of paper folded into the shape of a cocaine wrap. When unwrapped, the paper reads : "Fusion - the only thing worth sniffing in a club", with a sticky label which, once peeled back, revealed white, cocaine-like powder that smelled of the perfume.

"The advert communicated a clear anti-drugs message," says a Fusion spokesman. "It was intended to promote the fragrance but was in no way intended to condone illegal activity." The ASA concluded that "the use of words and images closely associated with illegal drugs were likely to be seen to condone illegal drug use."

The examples go on. Sony Computers got famously slapped around its joysticks last year by the ASA for a Playstation poster campaign which read "Powder, I need powder, my body aches, yells, screams for powder…" The ASA was concerned that the advert "which was so likely to be seen to condone illegal drugs" had been used at all. And if there are any lingering doubts about whether drug culture has not moved off the streets, Watches of Switzerland has just been reprimanded by the ASA for an advert that appeared in GQ magazine plugging its 500 to 2,000 pound range of Baume & Mercier "Hampton" watches. It featured a bishop smoking what looked like a joint.

"We would say that the bishop was smoking a loosely rolled cigarette," argues Sarah Sowton, marketing manager for Watches of Switzerland.

Isn’t that a little dubious?

"I’m not going to comment on that," she says. "We were just trying to create something that was funny, quirky, contemporary and fun."

It was certainly fun, but the company had to withdraw the advert after the ASA condemned it as "likely to be seen to depict and condone illegal drug-use."

ASA spokesman Chris Reed agrees that the body is dealing with more and more similar cases. "We’ve seen an increase in the kind of advertisements that allude to drug use - either directly or indirectly," he says.

On TV, with its much broader audience base, the references tend to be more subtle - a hint of trippy imagery, a soundtrack by a rave band, a snippet of the latest club slang. In the past few months, the ITC has investigated complaints about the American Express Blue Card campaign and the Rover 200 commercial showing the woman with the wild painted contact lenses.

Lewis Blackwell, editor of Creative Review, believes that most companies know exactly what’s going on with their advertising campaigns. "It’s unlikely that they’re just going to sign up for something they don’t understand," he says. "They want to be provocative and controversial but as soon as there is any comeback, they’re not going to acknowledge it because that’s too dangerous. Advertisers are wise guys, and they’re keen to exploit the drug-culture thing - that’s their job."

The print adverts tend to appear in lifestyle magazines that have dived on board the drugs bandwagon to keep in touch with the tastes of their own readers. And although the fashion industry that’s their lifeblood has come under fire for promoting "heroin chic", it would appear to be unrepentant; last year designer Andrew Groves upped the ante when his models sported dresses made of razor blades and strode down a catwalk dusted with white powder.

"We do at least one drug feature a month," says Michael Hogan, editor of Sky Magazine, published by EMAP Metro. "Our readers are not people who live in Soho and wear different sunglasses every day, they’re just kids who are interested in popular culture and what’s happening. They probably take an E every weekend and smoke a bit of marijuana. Drugs are now part of the mix in young people’s lives." The same approach is taken by IPC’s Loaded and countless other magazines.

Big business is not unnaturally trying to reach this market through cheeky advertising. And it is also trying to associate products with the culture through what’s known as "edge branding" - sponsorship of the hippest clubs, magazine pages, bands and festivals.

Similar tactics are evident elsewhere as First Choice, the family-holiday people, also run twentysomething package tours to "mental" Ibiza and "the totally on one" resorts in the Greek Islands, or the alcopops people give their bottles pseudo-rave names such as "Chill’in", or the Body Shop promotes its new THC-free Hemp range by the use of the cannabis-leaf logo.

Meanwhile, a stroll down the main shopping street in Manchester will take you to HMV where you can purchase The Joint Rolling Handbook (Expert Edition) for 5.99 pound or a "Legalise It" postcard subverting the Misuse of Drugs Act, 1971, with the phrase "Consumption of controlled drugs on these premises will be tolerated."

In the meantime, education is coming from friends’ experience and the Internet, with its thousands of unrestricted pro-drugs sites. In cyberspliff-land you can send a "virtual toke" postcard, find out how to make opium tea from the Junkie Homepage, or download the Ganja Farmer game for free (you have a 20mm machine gun atop your 1969 VW minibus and blow away anybody and anything that tries to mess with you or your herb).

But you can also nose in on discussion groups or write in with problems. Rather than see an official drugs-education officer, young drug-takers can contact the Oracle of Buddha himself in the High Times site, or send an e-mail to ecstasy.org. The people running these sites have been there, swallowed it and lived to tell the tale. The Health Education Authority’s website www.trashed.uk doesn’t stand a chance.

I put it to George Howarth, the Home Office minister responsible for drugs, that any information the Government puts out can’t be anything but out of touch. "It’s necessary because drugs do damage people, even so-called recreational drugs," he says. "Secondly, I think that as people grow older they recognise that drugs can lead to serious problems."

But is the Labour Government in danger of losing credibility and alienating the huge numbers of people under the age of 30? "It might do at specific times with specific young people," he agrees. "But in the generality of things, they’ll probably move through the stage and will appreciate the message when they come out of it." Even so, that message is given out in the context of the Government inviting pop culture - i.e. drugs culture - into No 10 to trade off their cool.

High-street magazines including the music title Mojo have featured stars smoking joints on their covers, while even Britain’s oldest newspaper The Observer had a travel supplement cover story this month featuring convicted drugs-smuggler Howard Marks smoking ganja in Jamaica. (Marks’ autobiography, incidentally, has sold more than 200,000 copies.) Sun readers, despite the paper having come down firmly against the legalisation of drugs in its editorials, voted two to one in favour of legalisation.

A Radio 1 poll last year showed 84 per cent of their listeners wanting the right to use drugs. And an embarrassing survey by the official Drugs Enforcement Administration (DEA) in the US concluded in a three-year study of 40,000 American "winners" - successful business executives, lawyers, scientists and civic leaders - that 71 per cent had experimented with controlled substances. It didn’t fit to well with its "Do drugs and you’ll be a loser" message. "It goes against everything we know about drugs," said the DEA head researcher Howard Tobin. "There is clearly something at work here we don’t understand."
(Marijuananews note: I am told that this story is a hoax, which is ironic, because most of the hoaxes in this field are by -- not about -- the DEA.)

The problem the Government now faces is how to enforce anti-drugs legislation in the face of criminals making huge profits from drug use that is tacitly accepted by huge sections of society. "The Government adopted my findings on crack and heroin, so when I do that sort of work I’m OK," fumes Illegal Leisure author Howard Parker. "But when I’m talking about normalisation there’s a lot of tutting and frowning because the Government’s saying there’s no need for an independent enquiry into the Misuse of Drugs Act."

Parker is also angry that before his appointment, Keith Hellawell, if not openly for the legalisation of drugs, was one of the few police chiefs open to the possibility - "We should think the unthinkable," he said.

Government policy at the moment is to maintain the status quo. I put this point to Hellawell that this weekend thousands, if not millions, of young people will be taking drugs, probably without coming to any harm, almost definitely without being arrested. Is that really a problem? "I think it is," he replies. "It’s a crime…I wouldn’t feel comfortable if my children or grandchildren used it; I wouldn’t want them to take the risk."