Time to get real about dangers of drug-taking
THE sad tale of the deaths of friends Benjamin Connelly and Leon Gow is a grim warning to young people. The two mates died in a Miami unit on Saturday night of a suspected drug overdose.
It is all too easy to skip past the story of these two men, to dismiss them as two more drug addicts not worthy of our attention. We should not.
Their addiction does not mean they were bad people, no more than the hopeless gambling addict or alcoholic.
Indeed, distraught family and friends say the pair had worked hard to shake their problem, both attending rehab at Burleigh.
It is a great tragedy that those efforts at going clean were ultimately unsuccessful.
Yes, they were addicts, but they were also someone’s mates, someone’s sons.
And they are far from alone.
Also last week, a young woman was found slumped in a car on a northern Gold Coast road.
We must await the results of an autopsy to confirm the cause of her death, but authorities suspect an overdose, and her friends are also distraught at the sudden end of a young life.
There have been many more such deaths, too many.
A report released last month showed the number of people dying from drug overdoses on the Gold Coast has increased 75 per cent in the past decade.
The figures showed 245 Gold Coasters died from overdoses from 2012 to 2016, 105 more than in the 20022006 period.
On average, that’s almost one a week, which is more than double the number of people killed on our roads.
But the drug deaths get far less attention.
We have to ask why. This is an epidemic killing our young people.
Is it because, by taking drugs, the victims are seen as being partly to blame for their own misfortune? Perhaps.
There is also the fact that much of the upsurge in fatalities can be linked to overdoses of prescription drugs. Our new drug culture encourages the abuse of substances of all kinds.
But I suspect a far more insidious cause.
The message about the potential dangers of drugtaking is being watered down like never before.
Television shares some of the blame. From shows like Banged Up Abroad, which invites viewers to see smuggling drugs as a backpacker adventure, to series like Weeds and Breaking Bad, which turn criminal activities into suburban pastimes, there is a constant theme of sanitising and downplaying the evil effects of drug abuse.
Politics also has a role to play. Where once all politicians would have been steadfast in their opposition to recreational drug-taking, we now have some calling for the legalisation of cannabis for non-medical use.
It is a remarkable facet of modern life that among such clowns, saying something deemed vaguely nonpolitically correct sees you doomed to vicious condemnation, accused of wreaking havoc on vulnerable lives, but playing down the damaging effects of illegal drugs is somehow acceptable.
Then there are the misguided activists who muddy the waters by suggesting the best way to prevent kids keeling over at music festivals is to introduce testing of pills to avoid “bad” doses.
True, this may save some people at festivals from harm. But it also takes a lot of stigma out of drug-taking, implying it can be an acceptable part of a big day out. It may even encourage many to take drugs for the first time.
And what happens when they decide to repeat the experience? Are we to have pill-testing in every bar, every nightclub, every student bedroom?
The tendency of people to believe everything they read online – and disregard the serious advice of the medical community – is also a major factor.
There are children being brought up to believe that highly trained medical professionals are not to be trusted, while every two-bit herbalist with a website is worth listening to.
Who will these children believe when they become young adults, the seriouslooking folk in medical garb begging them to avoid illegal drugs or the morons in tie-dye talking about “safe” doses?
They should believe this. For so many people, there is no “good” dose or “safe” dose, only addiction. What starts small can soon become big, and end in wasted life.
This is not a poor person’s problem. It cuts across all social classes.
It takes the smart and the beautiful and the talented in equal measure.
People like Victorian footballer Riki Stephens, who died after overdosing during a trip to the Gold Coast.
Riki was one of a large number of young people who were struck down in late 2016. Another, who had also fallen ill but survived, later wrote compellingly of the consequences.
These are the words young people should hear – not those of politicians or activists or online gurus.
“Saturday night I was given drugs from someone in SinCity – two days later I’ve woken up from a coma in hospital,” he wrote.
“Two-three seizures, kidney acute failure and not being able to stomach even water.
“I almost died. Please, if not for yourself, for me, don’t take drugs.”