APPENDIX 22
Letter from Ian Wardle, Chief Executive,
Lifeline Project Ltd
Thank you for your recent letter regarding the
"ambiguous messages" contained in one of our leaflets
"How to survive your parents discovering you're a drug
user". I don't think we have ever been "ambiguous";
"How to survive your parents discovering you're a drug
user" gives it away a bit in the title, but I will attempt
to explain the philosophy behind Lifeline publications.
Education and prevention are often confused,
an assumption is made that drug education prevents people from
taking drugs. There is no evidence that will stand up to any serious
scrutiny that supports this from anywhere in the world. What tends
to happen is that attitudes are measured rather than behaviour,
as measuring short-term attitude changes is much easier than measuring
behaviour. When behaviour is measured it shows that short-term
attitude changes do no have any significant impact on the numbers
of people using drugs and just highlight the failure of primary
prevention approaches.
This is not to say that drug education is a
waste of time, any more so than sex education is a waste of time.
Sex education covers factual information, prevention strategies
(STD's, unwanted pregnancies, age of consent etc) as well as putting
information into the context of thoughts, feelings and meanings.
It does not attempt to stop people having sex. The problem is
not with drugs education; it is with drugs prevention. Drugs prevention
is based on a disingenuous fallacy. Sometimes this is because
of a well-meaning moral belief or political expediency on the
part of those who champion it. Contemplating the alternative (that
it doesn't work) is not an option for some people; admitting it
doesn't work, is not an option for many politicians. Primary preventions
have responded to their failure by both denying facts, attacking
organisations like Lifeline that state openly that the "King
has no clothes" and by wasting more public money on tweaking
a philosophically flawed model.
In the mid 1980s when faced with the threat
of AIDS amongst injecting drug users, Lifeline looked at the available
evidence and spoke to drug users. Our conclusion was that we did
not know how to stop people taking drugs; (it may be that it is
not possible, we certainly do not know how to do it) to take public
money for preventing drug use was in our view immoral. We therefore
decided to look at what was possible. We believed that preventing
HIV among injecting drug users was both a more serious threat
and preventable. The success of this national approach can be
demonstrated in the extraordinary low numbers of drug injectors
infected with HIV in Britain.
Over the last 15 years we have attempted to
produce a range of publications aimed at a wide variety of drug
users, without the luxury of any public funding. We initially
started producing leaflets (a comic called Smack in the Eye)
in 1987; its aim was HIV prevention among drug injectors. The
philosophy behind our publications is very simple; to explain
it I'll use the sex education analogy again.
There has been controversy in the last decade
over the "promotion" of homosexuality in general school
based sex education. If however you had an aim of preventing STD's
among under 18 year old gay men, the argument becomes redundant.
A leaflet specifically targeted at a group of young gay men, that
attempted to promote heterosexuality and prevent them having sex
would not only be silly, it would be counterproductive if the
aim is to promote safer sex as it would alienate the audience.
Not only is the comic book approach we use popular;
it allows us to tell a story. These stories reflect the lifestyle
of the different groups of drug users we are aiming at. We are
attempting to see the world from their point of view and to take
their side. When we have an understanding; we attempt to give
information and advice that fits into their world, in a style
they find appealing.
The leaflet you mention is aimed at young drug
users. From a young drug users point of view a parent discovering
what they're up to is undesirable and potentially far more damaging
than their drug use. "Spelling out the undesirability"
of taking drugs in a leaflet aimed at drug users is as silly as
spelling out the undesirability of gay sex in a leaflet aimed
at gay men. This does not mean we do not spell out some of the
dangers of drug use, far from it. We are trying to reduce the
harm from drugs by telling the truth; the lies and exaggerations
of primary prevention campaigns just make our job harder.
If you want a more detailed academic explanation
of our approach, we have one available.
March 2002
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