News last week that two teenagers might have died after using the legal high mephedrone was tragic.
So too, though, was the story’s coverage.
Sadly for those uninformed about mephedrone and its effects, the news media had had their version of events drafted for months, ever since Mcat scare stories began to emerge.
All that was missing was a couple of unlucky youngsters through which to tell their scripted agenda.
Except they couldn’t even wait for results of a post-mortem on Scunthorpe duo Louis Wainwright and Nicholas Smith before launching into a new killer drug hysteria.
In their respective Wednesday bulletins, ITV Calendar and ITN showed someone who had been high on mephedrone for five days booting the hell out of a police cell door.
It didn’t look pretty. But that said, CCTV footage from the same cell any other night of the week would’ve looked similarly unpretty. Just replace the five-day mephedrone binger with a five-hour booze binger.
Calendar reporter Julie Lockwood called the footage ‘the reality of mephedrone’. Now I’m sorry, Julie; but no, it isn’t.
The reality is thousands of youngsters are taking mephedrone recreationally in this country and experiencing nothing to put them off taking it again. What’s more, they’ve been doing so for nearly a year.
Of course, Julie Lockwood knows that as well as I do. (Well, if she bothered to do her research she does.)
But her story wouldn’t quite have had the same impact had she been a bit more balanced by putting the case of Louis and Nick into perspective.
Their deaths – if indeed they prove to be linked to mephedrone – are anomolies.
And what she failed to share with viewers was Louis and Nick had also been drinking alcohol on their night out. Oh, and they were also taking the heroin substitute methadone. But that’s not important, right?
News journalism is supposed to be the public’s watchdog. They’re there to present the facts and let the public decide for themselves. Yet I didn’t see any news outlet doing that this week.
It seems chasing readers and viewers is more important than reflecting reality.
Let’s get it right. Shoving mephedrone up your nose on a regular basis isn’t advisable. Many have had forgettable experiences, with increasing complaints of terrible nosebleeds and vicious mood swings.
I recently spoke to two students who’d had mephedrone experiences to forget. One had lost the chance of becoming a teacher after being arrested by police on suspicion of possessing cocaine, while the other spent a night in hospital with her heart rate through the roof.
The drug should be banned. But it was always going to be banned, and the vast majority of people who’ve been using it for the past year or so have known that. Yet it has barley stopped them.
The law should intervene as a precaution to the small percentage of recreational mephedrone users who are swayed by its supposed ‘legality’.
For the rest, it’ll make little difference until either the price goes up or the next legal high comes along. At as little as £8 a gram, those who are hooked on mephedrone’s high will need more than media hysteria and a bad nosebleed to look elsewhere.
The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs had long since been looking into mephedrone after it was banned in umpteen countries, including Australia and the United States. Their findings will be announced at the end of this month.
Conservatives say – should they be voted in – they’ll ban all legal highs until tests have been carried out.
But in fact, what impressionable, experimental people my age should be told is that taking too much and mixing too much of any high almost always has repercussions.
Sadly, such sensible advice doesn’t win votes.
But when it’s banned, you’ll still be able to get hold of mephedrone.
Just like, if you want it, you can get your hands on every other classified drug.