The Guardian survey reveals that many people take drugs without suffering, but they are interested in evidence
Here are the top lines from the Guardian/Mixmag drug use survey: 15,500 people responded, 60% through the Guardian, 7,700 in the UK, and they were all active drug users, which was defined as having taken drugs in the last three months.
By and large, they had high levels of satisfaction with life. They didn't feel defined by their drug use and they didn't see it as a problem. Asked which substances they'd like to cut down on, respondents overwhelmingly said tobacco, then heroin, then crack. For every other drug, from alcohol to cocaine, the majority using it were broadly happy with the amount they used. Asked whether they were worried about their friends' drug and alcohol use, many were (53%), but when boiled down to a specific substance, the worry was about alcohol – by some margin.
Now this is a self-selecting sample. It's not what you'd call "clean" data. So there are a number of conclusions you couldn't reach: you couldn't say that drugs and alcohol don't cause anyone any problems; that they're never addictive; that they never lead to criminality; that they have no public health consequences; and that they always leave you pretty happy, a bit of a hangover notwithstanding. There are plenty of people in prison for drug and drug-related offences who aren't included here.
And there are physiological verities that we know – drugs and alcohol interfere with human empathy. If a large sample of drug users say their relationships have never been affected, then you can assume this is because they haven't yet taken enough drugs, they haven't had enough relationships, or they didn't notice a drug-related problem in a relationship because they were on drugs. It would be impossible to be long-term addicted to a substance, legal or illegal, without that having any impact on the people around you unless you kept those people at a distance, and to a minimum.
Having said all that, it doesn't mean that the survey tells us nothing. It tells us that the easy association between drug use and chaos can't be made. This is a mainly white, educated, active, healthy sample, most of whom are in work or fulltime education. When you strip out the students, they are above average earners, given their mean age (28 and a half). If they are caught by the police the great majority of them are let off, often without a caution. Illegality without consequence, in the long run, is probably more corrosive to the law maker than the law breaker, though of course that depends on what kind of drugs you are breaking the law with.
But we already knew that, right? Nobody thinks that smoking a joint is the road to ruin. Nobody thinks that it would be impossible to take coke on a Saturday night and go to work on a Monday morning. I can no longer even imagine the sort of person that we're all supposed to believe still does think like this. It's as if we've all been minding our language for the sake of a fragile aunt who has actually died without anybody noticing.
There are still people who disapprove of illicit drug use, but that doesn't mean they can't or won't distinguish between one kind of drug use and another. Nobody thinks that use, dependence and addiction are interchangeable. Nobody is going to be surprised by the fact of this fifth column, many thousands strong, all using drugs while appearing to be totally normal. The news is that this is not news.
If there's a large cohort that is invisible in any conversation about drug use and addiction – whether that is in the media, in the rehab field, or in policymaking – does that matter? First, it's a bit of a waste. Epidemiologically speaking, if you want to understand a disease it is often useful to observe the people who were exposed and didn't get it. So understanding addiction might be a bit easier if everyone could just admit that some drug-takers never get addicted, and some drugs aren't addictive.
Second, an unreflecting preference for catastrophe in the way things are discussed doesn't only distort facts; eventually facts that are wrong turn into policies that are bad. Alcohol provides the timeliest example here.
Next week's budget will contain a minimum price per unit, aimed to combat the timebomb of over-consumption. In fact, average consumption has dropped 20% in five years. If you're surprised by that, you'll be staggered to hear that 87% of adults already have three alcohol-free nights a week. Who will be hit by this budget? Consumers of cheap alcohol (expensive booze already exceeds the recommended unit cost). Who needs to be hit? Nobody. There's nothing to see except a bunch of politicians kicking a dead bird.
Third, lingering for a second on that drop in alcohol consumption, what has driven people to stop drinking and smoking? It's partly health warnings but crucially, it's health warnings that sound plausible. About 63% of drug users would like to give up smoking. It's not because they want to fall into line; smoking is nothing like as much frowned-upon as taking MDMA. It's just because they don't want to get lung cancer. People are much more interested in evidence than they are in authority.
So, as a government, you can't have plausible guidelines on illegal drugs while you continue to overstate their danger. More important, you can't address yourself to this constituency at all – the drug users who aren't in prison or rehab or passed out on a park bench – while simultaneously pretending that they don't exist.
Twitter: @zoesqwilliams