Drugs and the Media

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Abstract
“Drugs” are extremely newsworthy: each year they are the subject of literally thousands of items produced by the Australian media. Most of these items are repetitious, stereotypical and narrowly focused on crime, deviance and rectification. Illegal drug consumption by individuals and the efforts of medical and social welfare professionals to eradicate the “problem” so defined are the twin foci of the press and television. Legal substances (including tobacco and alcohol) are interpreted much more ambiguously, and are relatively infrequently the subject of journalistic analysis.The media systematically ignore the historical, economic and industrial aspects of drug production and consumption.“Drugs”, although habitually construed as the cause of “human” and “social” problems (and hence as necessitating administrative attention), seem strangely divorced from real political economic determinations. They serve as inexhaustabled pretexts for the proliferation of television current affairs items and newspaper features which seldom resist the image of the confessing, suffering victim. “Hard” news is preoccupied with reiterating the ritual drama of drug seizures and exposes of “organised” crime. Both the press and television educate their audiences to a resigned, alienated passivity.

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