Words We Use
A toast to “people who use drugs”
Last week saw the publication of the latest gem from the UK Home Office: “Swift, Certain, Tough.” You could be forgiven for assuming this white paper is another instalment in the government’s relentless war against migrants. But while it does reference human trafficking, the target of the policy document is another bogeyman: the “recreational drug user.”
Subtitled “New consequences for drug possession,” the paper’s aim is to reduce demand for Class A, B and C substances through the introduction of stricter penalties for possession. In the hyperbolic language of the political promise, the paper “commits to delivering a generational shift in demand” for drugs and a consequent decline in use through a three-tiered system of increasingly harsh punishments (with strong echoes the US “three-strikes” model of sentencing) for low levels of possession. Under the new proposed laws, first-time offenders would have to pay for and attend a drug awareness programme while by the third time they could face the confiscation of their driving licences or passports.
For anyone familiar with the UK’s drug laws (which are increasingly at odds with the decriminalisation and regulation systems introduced in a number of other countries, including the Netherlands, Portugal, Canada and some US states), reading “Swift, Certain, Tough” is a depressing experience of déja-lu. For all its hype about “turning the tide” the white paper basically follows the prohibitionist path first set out in the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act. Drug reform experts have already explained, drawing on a wealth of evidence, why the proposed legislation will fail, yet again, to deter drug use or to end the destruction associated with the international drug market.
In her Ministerial Forward to the white paper, Home Secretary Priti Patel points the finger at “so-called recreational drug users”. According to Patel, “these individuals are sheltered from the human cost of the drugs trade. They are putting money into the pockets of dangerous drug gangs, fuelling violence and causing social harms, including environmental destruction and human trafficking.” Blaming individuals for the failings of the system is a vintage Tory move. But the terminology used in the white paper also reflects language around drugs that is used among the wider population.
Conservative party minions and the media – not only the tabloid press – have been laying the groundwork for this legislation for some years now by whipping up hysteria about “middle-class cocaine users,” typically portrayed as City workers or members of the Islington dinner party scene, even freshers at redbrick universities, who merrily snort white powder, confident that won’t be arrested. “Recreational drug user” is more a capacious category than “middle-class cocaine user,” but it still evokes privilege, selfishness and political irresponsibility (terms one might almost associate with more than a few of Patel’s colleagues in the House of Commons; conveniently for them, however, and contrary to the logics of science and consistency, alcohol is a not defined as a drug for legislative purposes).
The white paper’s use of the term “recreational drug users” is canny. It allows the Home Office to position the government as a heroic saviour of vulnerable people – people who are addicted to drugs and children caught up in “county lines” (another sensationalist term that has been taken up largely uncritically by policy makers and the media over the past several years) while being tough on the bad guys. The document states that “there should also be no difference in how individuals are treated based on age, gender, ethnicity, and other protected characteristics.”
This is all a ruse. The term “recreational drug users” may imply middle-class people, but the paper’s specific reference to cannabis as “the most used drug” makes it clear that practices such as police stop and search for cannabis possession will increase rather than decrease under any new legislation. Studies show that Black people are much more likely to be stopped and searched on suspicion of cannabis possession and that overall people of colour face greater chances of arrest and criminal prosecution for drug-related offences than white people.
Terms like “recreational drugs” and “drug users” hide these inequalities. Yet they are so entrenched in everyday language as to sound like common sense. They appear in academic papers and the mainstream media. Although UK and international law draws a strict distinction between drugs used for “recreation” and those available legally for medical purposes, in practice the line between the two groups is much less distinct. Similarly, the white paper’s neat separation of “recreational drug use” from addiction belies the fact that these are not fixed categories.
Perhaps most pernicious of all is the way we talk about alcohol. Ask yourself: How often have you said to office mates, “Let’s go out and do some drugs after work”? On that WhatsApp group inviting you to a summer picnic, how many people wrote, “I’ll bring some drugs to share”? When was the last time you opened an email that read, “The keynote lecture by our internationally renowned speaker will be followed by a drugs reception”? There are cultural factors at play in the special treatment accorded to alcohol in a country like the UK, as well as the obvious fear that to use the word “drugs” publicly can have legal consequences (I’m even careful about how I use the word in written communication with other drug reform activists). But when we uphold the special status of alcohol as a legal drug through the words we use, we may inadvertently boost fear and ignorance about substances legally classes as A, B and C, and mask the serious harms caused by polite (and not so polite) society’s public drug of choice.
The language we use to describe different drugs, different kinds of drug use and our relationship to them reflects moralism and hypocrisy as well as cultural norms. It may come from a sincere concern about the impact of addiction on individuals and society, but this can lead to the mistaken impression that any use of proscribed drugs inevitably causes addiction, reinforcing the myth that it is the drugs themselves rather than the context in which they are produced, traded and consumed that makes them potentially harmful. Our muddled language around drugs is not responsible for bad drug policy, but it probably makes it easier for the Home Office to achieve quite a feat: to present a piece of legislation that proposes to usher in draconian measures that will inevitably fall most heavily on those who are already more likely to be criminalised for drug use as a measure to protect vulnerable people by punishing the privileged.
As for the “users” themselves, the preferred term among activists and experts, as well as people who use drugs is – you guessed it – “people who use drugs.” It’s a bit of a mouthful, but it avoids defining a person through a single vilified activity. It humanises drug use instead of stigmatising people. That’s the opposite of what this white paper does, and that’s a good reason to change the language we use to refer to drugs and the people who use them – including, for those who imbibe, ourselves.
For UK readers: The consultation on the white paper “Swift, Certain, Tough” New Consequences for Drug Possession” is open until 10 October.