Pubdate: Fri, 11 Jan 2013
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: 2013 The Vancouver Sun
Contact: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/letters.html
Website: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477
Author: Ian Mulgrew

ECSTASY PLAY MORE PROPAGANDA THAN EDUCATION

The Real-Life Villain Isn't The Drug Itself, But The Failure Of
Criminal Prohibition

A well-meaning play by Burnaby high-schoolers on the perils of
ecstasy reveals what is wrong with letting police priorities turn drug
education into War-on- Drugs propaganda.

Although the play, titled Russian Roulette, is billed as "a production
by students, for students," the executive producer was the justice
ministry, which contributed $ 24,000 to the project, and the directing
hand was the Burnaby RCMP.

The kids, as a result, appear to have guilelessly created a 21st-
century stage version of Reefer Madness, using ecstasy in place of
marijuana in their morality play.

Just as pot was demonized in the much-ridiculed 1936 film, originally
called Tell Your Children, so ecstasy is vilified as some kind of
killer drug.

Material distributed in conjunction with the performances
hyperbolically warns "there is no safe dose of ecstasy."

None of the University College of the Fraser Valley eggheads who wrote
the pamphlet saw the 25 Brits consuming ecstasy in the name of science
last fall on television, I guess.

That show demonstrated what the pure substance known as MDMA does to
the brain in an "attempt to tell the truth about the effects of the
recreational drug."

The Justice Ministry funded this proposal from the RCMP and Burnaby
school district in response to a spate of deaths associated with
adulterated ecstasy.

It is essentially a new version of taking kids to the penitentiary or
the morgue to scare them straight, featuring the sobering and heart-
rending emergency call made by slumber-party friends of Abbotsford
teen Cheryl McCormack, who fatally overdosed.

Such tragedy is moving, but the message it conveys is muddy, unfocused
and often unhelpful.

It doesn't tell you much about ecstasy or the Gordian Knot that
prevents society from forging a sensible, evidence-based drug policy.

While I haven't seen Russian Roulette, the play as described by Lori
Culbert on the front page of The Vancouver Sun Thursday does not
mention the Big Picture problems, the potential medical benefits of
the drug or the campaign against the present prohibitionist approach
by the province's four previous attorneys general and numerous others.

David Nutt, president of the British Neuroscience Association and
former scientific adviser to the U. K. government on the dangers of
drugs, was behind the European television experiment.

He says ecstasy has been maligned for political rather than health
reasons.

The ex-chairman of the country's Advisory Council on the Misuse of
Drugs was sacked in a 2009 row that erupted after he quipped it was
safer than riding.

In Britain, there's one serious mishap for every 350 horseback riding
trips, compared to one serious adverse event for every 10,000 ecstasy
trips. Nutt's sense of perspective and honesty were not
appreciated.

Our own provincial officer of health, Perry Kendall, found himself in
a similar squeeze last year when he made comparable points.

Kendall asserted the risks of ecstasy were wildly exaggerated and that
it was lethal only when cooked up by careless and unscrupulous money
hungry gangsters.

B. C.' s top health official suggested taking pure ecstasy can be
"safe" when consumed responsibly by adults.

But don't tell that to the federal government, which last March
elevated MDMA into the same class as heroin or cocaine in spite of the
outcry from drug-policy reform advocates who said it would not curb
its availability or use but instead play into the hands of organized
crime and put kids at greater risk.

Like Nutt, Kendall immediately came under fire for trying to promote a
datadriven discussion - that potential risks associated with ecstasy
are infinitesimal compared to the damage wrought by crooks making and
selling it without quality, dosage or other controls.

But you won't hear any of that in Russian Roulette, whose
anachronistic intent is as transparent as its tropes are cheesy.

High school students deserve to be given a realistic understanding of
drug use and the scope and cost of drug abuse, not indoctrinated with
the discredited, old-fashioned view that a complicated public policy
and health problem is solved by just saying no.

The true villain in the real-life drama about how to legislate what
adults are allowed to consume isn't ecstasy or any other substance.

It's the failed criminal prohibition whose victims are legion and that
has made such drugs more accessible to youth than tobacco or alcohol
and exposed them to a caveat emptor marketplace regulated by
unspeakable violence.

No one on British TV had more than a bit of emotional discomfort after
taking clinically produced ecstasy. No one died.

The cutting-edge research dispelled some of the myths around the drug
and let ordinary people in on the hope that MDMA may be an answer for
millions of people who suffer from depression, anxiety and post-
traumatic stress disorder.

Now that's educational. 
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jo-D