According to the UN, there are a quarter of a billion drug users globally. These are real people, some of whom will constitute a significant (albeit minority) percentage of the Business Day and BusinessLive audience. However, this is also a constituency whose interests and perspectives are unrepresented and marginalised. The media produce a wealth of material that almost exclusively aligns with a war on drugs narrative, while ignoring factual information that would save lives. It is not as though this is difficult to address. The 10 Commandments of Safer Drug Use, an extract from The Honest Drug Book (a sort of drug user’s safety bible) could be published more widely, for example. While this is a stark example, it accurately represents the general situation. Life critical data and harm reduction material is buried and rarely, if ever, reported. Why do mainstream media fail to publish material targeted at and of relevance to the interests of actual drug users, even when this would ma...
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