Spice: The Latest In A Long Line Of Drug Scares
Both local and national newspapers have been falling over themselves recently in their rush to print the most sensational headlines about the latest drug scare – Spice.
The Mail Online (of course) is leading the pack with evermore alarmist reports, such as: “Rise of the zombies: Cheaper and more addictive than crack, Spice is the synthetic drug that turns users into the ‘living dead’ in minutes and is ruining lives across Britain.”
They go on: “Around Manchester city square and shopping area in Piccadilly Gardens, the ‘zombies’ with sunken cheeks and white skin covered in sores are highly visible.”
“Dead men and women were walking the streets of central Manchester this week. Some of them, their faces wan and eyes open but filled with a terrible vacancy, stumble forward with arms out-stretched. Others stand stock-still like shop mannequins, seemingly unconscious but upright, or slumped forward, as commuters scurry past with their heads down.”
Even those who work with the homeless are not averse to trotting out the odd media-friendly sound bite. According to Julie Boyle, a support worker at Lifeshare, a homeless charity covering Manchester, she believes that Spice was more dangerous than heroin.
Ms. Boyle is reported in the Times as saying: “It’s harder to come off Spice than it is to come off heroin. It makes vulnerable people more vulnerable. This thing at the moment that’s freezing people like statues… It’s a new strain that’s been around for about 10 days, it makes them in a catatonic state.”
A Spice user named Carl from Manchester told the Daily Mail he has been addicted ever since buying the drug in a legal high shop. “It’s awful to come off it,” he said. “You rattle. I’ve tried to get off it, but it’s harder than gear [heroin]. I smoke this because it’s better for me than injecting with needles – better for my health.” As he smoked the drug in front of the reporter, he said: “I’m starting to feel woozy. I can feel all my problems going away.”
It is true that Spice – a generic name for a group synthetic chemicals that over-stimulate cannabis receptors in the brain – can cause serious physical and mental problems. But the way in which the media tramples all over common sense with lurid stories of “zombies” hinders any serious attempts to get a grip on the issue.
Every time a new drug pops up the media festoon it with over-the-top, unsubstantiated, scaremongering. We saw this with LSD in the 60s, heroin in the 80s, ecstasy in the 90s, cocaine in the noughties, and crystal meth more recently – the stories remain the same, they just insert the name of the new drug for maximum impact. What will be next, I wonder?
If your organisation needs in-house training on alcohol and other drugs, including Spice and other Novel Psychoactive Substances (NPS), contact Alan at alan.matthews@boscosociety.org.uk
