The Misuse Of Drug Statistics

Young Irish people are the biggest abusers of amphetamines and ecstasy in Europe. In fact they are the fourth highest in the world, coming in behind only Thailand, Australia and the Philippines in the pecking order of drug abuse generally. Where ecstasy is concerned only the Aussies are more ‘up for it’, as the saying goes.

This is according to a new survey from the United Nations Office On Drugs and Crime. The director of the office, Antonio Martia Costa, was in Dublin last weekend attending a conference on drugs. “I worry very much about the Irish situation,” he said to the Irish Times. “In the first world survey on ecstasy and amphetamine statistics, Ireland featured very prominently in terms of consumption.”
During his visit here, he met with the Minister for Justice Michael McDowell and the Minister for Health, Michael Martin. It would be interesting to see what they had to say to one another. Did Mr. Martin, for example, tell Mr. Costa that the number of drug-related deaths in Ireland is amongst the lowest in Europe? This information is taken from the Health Promotion Agency’s own website, making an interesting contrast with the United Nations’ more apocalyptic view of the state of play here.
I sometimes wonder if policy makers ever put 2 and 2 together – and if they do, what answer do they come up with. I don’t have the exact figure to hand – I was hoping the HPA site might enlighten me – but I do know that the number of ecstasy-related deaths in Ireland is relatively low. If we use and abuse ecstasy as much as the UN says we do, what then does that say about the safety – relative or otherwise – of the drug?

Now here’s another interesting statistic. Between 1998 and 1999 over 800,000 ecstasy tablets were seized by the Gardai in drug raids in Ireland. Now let’s be generous and say that their success was such that they snatched 10% of all of the drugs that might have become available on the Irish market. If that assumption is anywhere near the mark, then up to seven million tablets may actually have been consumed over that two-year period here. So why is it that there is not more to show in terms of lost lives, devastation – or whatever other depradations the consumption of E is supposed to wreak?
I am not being glib here. There is no doubt that the use of illegal drugs causes serious problems for some users. Mr. Costa described the Irish consumption of illegal drugs – most specifically amphetamine – as like playing Russian Roulette. He has a point. When you buy a substance in the street or off a dealer, you never know for sure what’s in it. In the case of heroin, people have been sold rat poison and arsenic instead. In the case of cocaine, there’s little doubt that users have ended up snorting baking soda – or any of half a dozen other white powders, some of them poisonous, that look the more or less same, especially to the untrained eye. One thing is for certain: some drug dealers are utterly unscrupulous. The trouble is that you don’t always know which ones.
There was a story on the front page of the Evening Herald recently about a youth who took ecstasy at a party in Bray, and who gouged out his eye under its influence. The likelihood – almost the certainty – is that is wasn’t ecstasy that caused what was obviously an hallucinogenic reaction, leading to paranoia and delusions of a desperately extreme nature. In all probability, the unfortunate victim had taken – or been given – acid. And if he was given acid instead of ecstasy and was in the habit of taking two or three ecstasy and combined this kind of quantity with a significant amount of alcohol – well, then, who knows? Serious illness, injury and death are more likely to occur where poly-drug use is involved. But they are especially more likely to happen if you are given a bum pill.
So how dangerous is ecstasy? If you could rely on knowing what was in the tablet, all of the practical evidence suggests not very. There is considered to be a long-term risk that ecstasy can give rise to depression and other psychological problems in frequent users. It messes with your serotonin levels, which is why people feel ‘loved up’ when they take the drug. Doing that regularly to your system over a protracted period cannot but be bad for you, and anyone who thinks otherwise is off their head. But then the same is true of the use of almost any chemical: I suspect there are more valium addicts out there than there are people who are psychologically dependent on ecstasy. And valium is a prescribed drug.
The thing is that policy makers, the police and authorities generally have no credibility on the issue of drugs. The majority of thinking people take what they have to say as politically motivated and hypocritical – which it generally is. That will continue to be the case as long the fundamental approach amounts to prohibitionism, and scare-mongering, of a kind that doesn’t tally with the experience of users.
Mr. Costa has a colourful turn of phrase. Warning young Irish people off the consumption of amphetamines, of those who do indulge, he says: “Not all will end up like zucchinis but the chances of a bullet in the brain are very high.”
He may be right. But why then do governments supply amphetamines to soldiers going into combat? Why are they are now standard issue to U.S. Air Force combat pilots, to help them stay awake on long combat sorties? If the chances of a bullet in the brain are very high, do the combat pilots know this when they are given the tablets?
And can we ever arrange that George Bush takes a shit-load of them as soon as possible? If they don’t kill him,
they might at least improve his grammar.