Red carpet or red herring?

Last week two United Nations drug agencies – the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) in its annual report and the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) through an article in the Observer (9th March) criticised celebrities for glamorising drug use. The Prime Minister added his weight to the proposition that our celebrities are role models for young people and that they have a duty to act responsibly.

The most vitriolic attack came in the Observer article by the UNODC chief Antonio da Costa. The main thrust of his argument was that young westerners who use cocaine and who might otherwise have concerns about fair trade, third world debt, globalisation and so on, conveniently forget the violence and corruption across the world caused by their increasing demands for the drug. The legalisation lobby argue that Mr Costa similarly forgets that it is the international drug prohibition structure that he is charged with upholding, that causes most of the problems in the producer and transit countries. Yet, he does have a point: if everybody stopped using cocaine, that particular drug problem would be solved.

But can we seriously lay the blame for the generally high level of cocaine use in the UK and the rest of Europe at the feet of a few high profile individuals? The current levels of cocaine use have their roots back in the 1980s. Simply put, up until then, the top end British villain concentrated on armed robbery; bank vaults, bullion trucks and the like. Then as enforcement action hotted up and the gangsters ran the risk of getting shot by armed police, they fled to Spain. There they met up with criminals linked into the cocaine cartels of South America and began to realise that drug trafficking (including heroin and cannabis) was hugely more profitable than turning over banks and carried much less risk. This began the flow of cocaine into Europe, so that even by the early nineties, more cocaine was being seized by British customs than heroin. Ironically over time, the death in 1993 of Pablo Escobar, the world’s most notorious cocaine trafficker and the break-up of the two main cocaine cartels in South America, the Medellin and the Cali actually made matters worse. Far from crippling production and supply, the amount of cocaine coming out of the region increased because there were now many more middle-levels traffickers who needed to expand their trade beyond the already crowded US market. The US federal government responded with the hideously expensive Plan Colombia which has patently failed to stem the tide of cocaine; indeed some observers believe US intervention has made the situation worse by its focus of military rather than infrastructure solutions.

Yet still the charge remains that the pied-pipers of pop are leading our young people by the nose leaving a trail of death and devastation in their wake. So how do young respond? A group from Mentor UK were asked this very question by MPs at last week’s meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Substance Misuse Group – as were listeners to the youth-oriented radio station 1Xtra. And what did say? ‘We’re not that stupid’ - and it is symptomatic of our patronising attitudes towards young people that we should think them so gullible. In fact, fans of pop stars with drug problems generally feel sorry for them and wish they could get their lives back together again.

But what about the perennial charge that celebrities have a social responsibility to their fans? There are thousands of young people who dream of getting a record contract and making a career in music. They aspire to becoming entertainers, not role models. But for the very few who get there, they can quickly become entrapped by the media obsession with celebrity, snapped not only by paparazzi, but anybody these days with a camera in their mobile phone. The tabloids fall over themselves to get front-page candid shots. Who, you might ask, is doing the glamorising?

So the question remains. Why this constant harping on about celebrity drug use, especially by international drug agencies? Back in 1998, the UN declared that their goal by 2008 was to eradicate all opium and coca growing under the slogan, ‘A drug-free world. We can do it’. Aspirational would be a polite term for this goal, and of course with poppy and coca yields at record levels, the UN is as far away from its vision as it ever was. So we get a tirade against easy targets garnering even easier headlines.

Meanwhile we might consider if the crack users of the Brazilian slums, the chronic heroin and opium users of the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan and those facing another bout of state terror against users in Thailand, have ever heard of Amy Winehouse.