Drug takers ‘are stigmatised by being called addicts’

Report backed by Nick Clegg says insensitive language makes users less likely to seek help

DRUG users should not be called addicts and junkies, a report has warned, amid complaints that people are being stigmatised by insensitive language. The research, drawn up with the support of Sir Nick Clegg, the former Liberal Democrat leader who called for the legalisation of some drugs, also said claiming people who used drugs were lazy or unintelligent should be banned.

It said portrayals of drug users in the media and by MPS as “physically inferior or morally flawed” increased stigma and made people less likely to support plans to help.

The Global Commission on Drug Policy warned there is a drug perception problem which is making it harder to help users who want to stop taking drugs. New laws are often not as good as they could be because politicians base their decisions on “perceptions and passionate beliefs” instead of “factual discussions”, the research found.

Instead, drug policy is more often treated as a “moral debate” and drugs presented as unnatural, when “in reality, taking substances to alter one’s mind seems to be a universal impulse, seen in almost all cultures around the world and across history”, it states.

There are 12 former presidents or prime ministers from around the world on the commission, which calls for people in positions of power to change the way they talk about drug users in order to solve the problems associated with it.

The report says it should not be assumed that all drug use is wrong or dangerous and includes a number of “positive” examples of friends sharing cannabis and other more powerful drugs as part of their social lives.

The report said: “Drug use is relatively common and, in 2016, an estimated quarter of a billion people used currently illegal drugs, while about 11.6 per cent of these are considered to suffer problematic drug use or addiction. The most common pattern of use of psychoactive substances is episodic and non-problematic,” it states.

The report warns that most drug use is referred to as “immoral” while those who use illegal substances are “subhuman, non-citizens and scapegoats for wider societal problems”.

“Commonly encountered terms such as ‘junkie’, ‘drug abuser’, and ‘crackhead’ are alienating, and designate people who use drugs as ‘others’ – morally flawed and inferior individuals.

“Such stigma and discrimination, combined with the criminalisation of drug use, are directly related to the violation of the human rights of people who use drugs in many countries.

“Therefore, in order to change how drug consumption is considered and how people who use drugs are treated, we need to shift our perceptions, and the first step is to change how we speak.”