Drugs: no laughing matter?

Some years ago, this writer attended a conference where one of the speakers began, ‘I usually start my presentations with a joke. But drugs are far too serious a matter for that’. And the thought now, as then, is why not? Of course drugs are a serious matter: the lives of many people and their families have been wrecked by them. But many more lives have been destroyed by alcohol, yet comedians from W.C. Fields to Billy Connolly have created highly successful careers off the back of alcoholism – through reference to their own experience. Laughter has a serious point to make; if we can laugh at something, it becomes less threatening, more normalised and makes us less likely to react out of fear, ignorance and prejudice. Which are currently still the cornerstones of much public reaction to drugs and drug use. When a caller to a recent radio phone-in programme (in response to yet another call for heroin prescribing from a senior serving police officer) said that ‘I’d put them (users) against a wall and shoot them. They are scum.’- this was more than just a reaction to an illegal activity.

So where can we find humour in drugs? This week the government published a self-evaluation of its public drug information campaign called FRANK. Early on, the campaign took a commendably different approach, away from ‘Just Say No’ and did try to inject humour into its advertising with some success, although the recent ‘cannabis brain warehouse’ effort was extremely lame. The ad was instantly satirised on YouTube where customers were offered clean government-issue brains so they didn’t need to worry about things like the war in Iraq, identity cards etc.

There was an attempt a few years ago to produce a sitcom about heroin addicts. It got no further than some internet clips apparently because it was too boring. Nothing happened. They just sat around. Sounds like The Royals. But drugs do appear in the cultural mix of topical humour. Here are some very recent examples from the BBC:

• There should be two Olympics – one for drugs and one without – because if there is an athlete pumped-up on steroids who can run the 100 metres in six seconds, an awful lot of people would pay good money to see that. (Mock the Week)


• The polls show that David Cameron has taken the Tories to a new 15 year high in the polls. Or was it just something he smoked? (The News Quiz)


• It is claimed that the NHS is paying too much for drugs. Now if they just went down to Brixton….. (The News Quiz)

So can we get more perspective into the drugs debate through humour? Or is really not a laughing matter?