Originally Posted by Liviu Alexandrescu
Recent media reports pointing to the toxic effects of Spice on users and communities have called for immediate action from local and government authorities to mitigate the damages and sanitise public space. But years of state-enforced austerity reveal so-called ‘drug epidemics’ as just the symptom of deeper, structural economic problems and inequalities. Not least, also of a general condescending attitude towards the poor and less fortunate.
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Collective anxieties also coagulate around underclass victims and drug cultures but in a different symbolic register. Media language depicts users of the ‘harder’ drugs that leave visible marks on the body and generally intersect with poverty and abject living conditions – heroin, crack cocaine, crystal methamphetamine and now Spice – as risk-bearing ‘outsiders’. Likening Spice users to ‘zombies’ (empty shells devoid of reason and own will) provides a facile scapegoat in the person of the morally weak addict whose ‘diseased brain’ is to blame for his/her descent into misery, obscuring the larger socio-economic conditions that push the already vulnerable over the edge. Unlike ‘valuable’ youth worth protecting and preserving, rough sleepers, imprisoned offenders or lower class welfare recipients are more easily portrayed as less rational and superfluous. They also appear to be more disposable, their condition easier to dismiss as the result of weak character and poor choices.
Without doubt, Spice and other NPS have caused considerable harm to users and others around them. This should not shove aside, however, a more robust and critical debate about welfare cuts and the systematic dismantling of social security nets. Such measures have seen millions struggling to make ends meet or relying on food banks for survival and many plunging into mental health problems. Slashing entitlements as the fix-all dogma in public policy today risks further aggravating all these problems. We should never accept a society where drugs and other ways of coping with adverse circumstances are the prime source of moral outrage, whereas homelessness, extreme poverty and lack of life opportunities are perfectly acceptable.