[Contents]
[Chapter 7][Chapter
9]
At an international conference on drugs sponsored by the
British government in 1992, the TV and radio presenter Nick Ross
was asked whether he thought the media got the right type of
message across to young people.(92)
It depends what you mean by the right type of message. I think it
puts a very antiseptic message across. I suppose if we were to
tell the truth, we would point out that many drugs are fun. They
give you an extraordinary sensation of exhilaration, of
excitement, of energy, of capacity, calmness, insight, escape,
relief and pleasure - above all, pleasure. That's why so many
people take them. Again, if we take a less antiseptic approach we
would say that very, very, very, very, very few youngsters who
get involved with drugs will become addicted to them or have
serious problems with them. Far more of them will die or become
seriously injured through road traffic accidents.
But you wouldn't allow us to say that. And I'm not sure that
being honest is really what society asks of the media. I think
that what we are being asked, under a rather fraudulent umbrella
of being candid, is to carry a PR message. My experience of doing
programs in this area is that the closer you get to the street
and the more you talk to people who actually work in the area,
the less concerned they are to hear this PR message and the more
they want us to say the sort of things that, at the moment, I
think we fail on. We are not saying some of the true things.
Remember that the constituency of drug users is a very broad one.
We are not just talking to the one person who has one view of
life. We are talking to millions of people almost all of whom
have dabbled with addictive substances. Not only the substances
that are illegal, but the substances which are legal. This is the
complexity of it. I'm not sure society wants us to talk about it
all that elaborately. It likes the simple message: 'Drugs are
there, they are bad, they are criminal and you shouldn't go near
them'. I think that we do that message pretty effectively.
It is easy to justify this position by saying that the government
made Ecstasy illegal to protect its citizens. The argument goes:
'We, the responsible media, should not encourage people to break
the law or harm themselves. However, there is a lot of interest
in the subject, so we must report it. Therefore, we will edit our
material so as to cut out anything that might encourage people to
break the law.' This may sound alright, but the fact is that you
cannot tell the truth when you leave out one side of a story.
Even the 'quality' newspapers and medical journals do not
report on Ecstasy fairly. In October 1992, The Scottish Medical
Journal (and later The British Medical Journal) published an
article entitled 'Ecstasy and Intracerebral Haemorrhage', where a
case is described in which a 20-year-old man died after 'his
drink was spiked with Ecstasy', and three others who had
survived.(93) As the
symptoms appeared to me more typical of amphetamine than of MDMA,
I wrote to the author of the report asking how much MDMA was
found in the patient. He replied: "Unfortunately no assays
for MDMA or related substances were made in any of our
cases." In other words, he had done no tests and had no hard
evidence that Ecstasy was involved at all.
Despite the lack of evidence that MDMA was involved, the case was
picked up by various newspapers including the Glasgow Herald,
whose medical correspondent reported under the headline
"Highlighting the dangers of Ecstasy". The article had
an authoritative tone and stated unequivocally that the cause of
death was Ecstasy, while implying that the drug was known to
cause serious brain damage. The article mentioned an
"epidemic of use" and referred to patients in
psychiatric care as a result of taking Ecstasy, inferring that
psychological damage was due to a similar physical cause.
In October 1992 The Times commissioned me to write a front
page feature on Ecstasy for the Saturday Weekend Times. I warned
the editor that my conclusions were likely to be far more
positive than any that had so far been published, and made it a
condition that I would only go ahead if I could be sure that the
piece would not be edited in a way that altered the sense or made
me look silly, and the section editor, Jane Owen, agreed. I was
very pleased as I felt sure that a positive article in The Times
would carry considerable influence.
Eventually I was told that the editors were very pleased with the
piece I wrote. It was a serious article addressing the question
of toxicity based on references to the latest research, and
concluded that the case against the drug is not proven. Yet it
was never published - the paper seemed more concerned with not
upsetting their establishment readers than publishing the truth.
Then, shortly after my article was due to appear, The Times
included the following piece by Dr. Thomas Stuttaford in the
Medical Briefing column:
Ruthless rave promoters are allegedly restricting the supply
of water to dancers rendered overpoweringly thirsty by the drug
Ecstasy, so that the revellers may be persuaded to buy more
costly drinks. At the same time, it has been reported that
several would-be nannies have been sacked from the Norland
Nursery Training College for experimenting with the drug.
Both ravers and emergent nannies should read the British Medical
Journal editorial by Dr. John Henry, consultant physician at
Guy's, on the pharmacology of Ecstasy, a drug first patented in
1913 as an appetite suppressant - and rejected for this purpose.
. .
This was particularly annoying as my article had contained the
following: Dr. Henry of the National Poisons Unit at Guy's
Hospital, London, the researcher most quoted in alarmist reports,
has been accused by one of his own sources of a misrepresentation
of the facts. In a recent article in the British Medical Journal
(MDMA and the Dance of Death), Dr. Henry claims that MDMA has no
therapeutic potential. To support his argument he refers to a
study by Dr. Greer where 29 volunteers were given the drug by
psychotherapists and "All 29 experienced undesirable
physical symptoms. . ." including nausea, stiffness and
sweating.
In a letter in last month's BMJ, Dr. Greer accused Dr. Henry of
omitting the positive results of this study. "Eighteen of my
subjects reported positive changes in mood after their session;
23 reported improved attitudes . . .
Subsequently, I offered the article to all the 'quality' national
daily papers, but each one refused it. Eventually, it was
published in Druglink, a 'trade' magazine for workers in the
field. Though few people will have read it there, I felt
validated in that the editor satisfied himself of its accuracy by
checking up on the many references made in the article to
published scientific papers.
An idea of the attitudes of editors can be seen by the following
correspondence in March 1994:
To the Editor of Reader's Digest
Dear Sir,
Forthcoming article on Ecstasy
As author of the most popular book on Ecstasy, I was recently
telephoned by a researcher in connection with an article that you
have commissioned on the subject.
I saw the article you published last summer on Ecstasy. While the
facts may have been correct, the article was grossly misleading,
giving the impression that those who take the drug run a serious
risk to themselves. Of course all activities carry risk. But
those who go skiing and horse riding run a far greater risk to
their life and health. The risk of taking Ecstasy compares to
that of going to a funfair, and is equivalent to that taken on a
short journey by car. Though only time will tell, evidence to
date indicates that Ecstasy users damage themselves less than
those who drink alcohol or smoke tobacco.
In fact, practically all of the deaths attributed to taking
Ecstasy have been due to overheating or mixing with other drugs
(including alcohol). Over the past year, while Ecstasy use has
increased, the number of casualties has declined markedly. This
is due to information reaching users via leaflets such as
Lifeline's Peanut Pete series of comics, and Greater Manchester's
Safer Dancing Campaign which aims to save users from overheating
- and to a lesser extent, my own book.
I hope you will publish a more enlightened article, and one which
contains the information necessary for users to prevent damaging
themselves. You could well base it on the success of the Safer
Dancing Campaign which has undoubtedly saved several lives.
I suggest that you take note of the reasonable tone of the recent
Newsweek article (copy enclosed). I also suggest that you ask
your researchers to obtain a copy of the latest book on the
subject written by a doctor and a sociologist, just published
this month. It is The Pursuit of Ecstasy by Dr. Jerome Beck and
Dr. Marsha Rosenbaum published by the State University of New
York Press, which gives an up to date overview of the topic.
I do not expect mention of my own book, but I would recommend
that your researcher reads a two-page feature on it in The
Guardian 7/9/93.
Yours faithfully,
Nicholas Saunders
Dear Mr. Saunders,
I have received your letter and I have no intention of publishing
an article along the lines you suggest. I stand by every word in
our timely warning in the article "A Deadly Kind of
Ecstasy".
Yours sincerely
Russell Twisk, Editor-in-Chief.
When the first edition of this book came out I was rang up by a
breakfast TV show and invited to talk about it. I was ushered in
to the studio and sat on a couch next to the parents of a boy who
had died, so they believed, from taking Ecstasy. Although he had
committed suicide which seemed most unlikely to be caused by
Ecstasy, I was their scapegoat. I was put in an impossible
position: I could hardly accuse grieving parents of unfairly
blaming their own failure on a drug, and had to put up with the
father shouting at me: "Have you ever held a warm, dead body
of someone you loved from taking Ecstasy? Then you don't know
what you are talking about." There was no doubt who was the
baddy; I was set up.
Then I was interviewed for a BBC London radio programme. The
interviewer encouraged me to talk about all the positive aspects
of the drug, and an assistant congratulated me afterwards for
coming out with the truth. Then he said he wanted some
background, and as I didn't know what he meant I dithered and
contradicted myself - and this was the only part of the interview
that they broadcast! As a result, I insisted on going live on the
next interview (with Radio Leeds). I wrote down answers to
questions and, like a politician, said them even if they didn't
fit the question!
Tabloid newspapers said the book should be banned, and a Dublin
newspaper used its entire front page to say so. But some papers
did support the book, and when The Guardian published a two-page
feature in favour I felt vindicated.
[Contents]
[Chapter 7][Chapter
9]
E for Ecstasy by Nicholas Saunders
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