Panel Discussion
Mo Chaudry: Cream, 16 Morninton Crescent, Hounslow, London, TW5 9S, UK. Email: mo_chaudhry@hotmail.com
Steve Dubois: Dance Drugs Alliance, c/o Respect Users, Po Box 20717, London E3, UK
Marco Langedijk: Amsterdam Police, Bureau Rampoort, Marnixstraat 148, Amsterdam, 1016 TE, Netherlands.
Thérèse Michaelis: Centre de prévention des toxicomanies, 3 rue de Fort Wallis, Luxembourg 2714, Luxembourg. Phone no: 352-49 77 77
Email: cept@pt.lu.
Arthur Schroers: INDRO e.V, Drogenhilfe Munster, Schorlemerstrasse 8, Munster 48143, Germany.
Amador Calafat: IREFREA, C/Rambla 15, 2º3, Palma de Mallorca, 07003, Spain. Phone no: +34-971 727 434
Mo Chaudhri
The reason I decided to help out with the Liverpool John Moores University’s recent research study in Ibiza was that people knew I was working for Lifeline and involved in collecting drug information. A lot of people want factual information about the drugs they are taking. They are not interested in the myths. We need to know what drugs people consume and what their patterns of use are. I am involved in working really closely with a lot of people who take drugs. They use drugs because they want to take drugs. They take them whether or not there are risks involved. These are young people who also go mountain climbing, go travelling to dangerous parts of the world. They know what choices they are making.
I think a lot of people’s perceptions are formed by their peer group and the culture they live in. Young people appreciate non-interventional methods, especially if it is from their own culture. The old models where people used to try to teach people have failed and we can see the continued failure now.
Amador Calafat
We are confronted with a variety of young people who have used drugs, even though some people have just experimented with marijuana. There are ‘sub cultures’ in every town, and young people in each town have different perceptions and look for different drugs, and different ways of having fun. After five years, problematic drug users are often in the same situation or worse, and then we decide to give them methadone or something but within the recreational context the situation is much more complicated. We cannot say that they do not like this or that approach.
Mo Chaudhri
During the summer, on behalf of Liverpool John Moores University and HIT, I took out to Ibiza some basic information on drugs. It was really well received, because that is what people want: factual information which informs their decisions.
Steve Dubois
The UK Dance Drugs Alliance is actually very new. It is essentially about celebrating the culture of the dance drug scene. We consider it a culture that needs to be celebrated. When people start talking about prevention I just switch off. I am a drug user. I do not think talking about prevention in clubs or at free parties is the way to go about harm reduction. I do not really see any risks in drug taking because it has all been normalised. I do not think of the risks when I go out to use drugs, and I don’t think many other people do either. The information people want is just the basic facts on the effects of drugs. Clubbers and ‘partiers’ have a lot of knowledge that can be passed around on a friendly basis. That is definitely the best way of getting information passed around. With regard to prevention, I would rather see other methods like peer education.
Arthur Schroers
Drogenhilfe Munster have carried out research about consumption patterns within the rave scene and they are also involved in prevention work. I do not like this term but I think we are improving public health by going to parties on-site and giving users very direct advice about consumption. We obtain information from the scene and give it back to the scene. We see that the people are very interested in receiving good information.
Prevention is everywhere. It is not about saying "you have to stop using drugs" nor is it a moral intervention. It is just a way of interacting with people in a very natural way to give information out, to work with people from the scene with self-organisation powers. There is a lot of self-regulation and a lot of information. This is where we get the sources for our work. We also went deep into the scene to research what was going on there. We have a lot of links with people in the rave scene. When we are on-site, we see that people take up a lot of information and are very interested in talking about their problems, about their daily life and whatever. We do not carry out traditional interventions but I think there is a place for us because we just look at what is going on and we work in a very responsive way.
Marco Langedijk
Amsterdam Police are jointly responsible with the city council’s fire department for regulating events. The local authority grants the license and the event organiser has to follow the rules that are in the license. We have had very bad experiences with illegal house parties which have been very dangerous, not only because of the use of drugs but also because there were no emergency exits and no first aid posts. They were also very dangerous because of fire risks, so we started not only to co-ordinate parties, and to address the use of drugs but also, in the interests of public health, to ensure that parties were safe for people. We now have agreements with the people who co-ordinate parties. We started with basic things but nowadays we make agreements about everything from public toilets, to fireworks, to emergency exits, to security at the entrance. In Amsterdam over the years, we have found that people who visit the parties are satisfied and a lot of people come back because they feel safe. They not only tell us but they tell their friends that they want to come back.
In the beginning, there were some people who used too many drugs. Nowadays there is a lot of information through peer projects as well as flyers and pill testing. Nowadays we do not have so many problems at parties. Of the 5000 people at an event, five or ten will use too many drugs, and/or combine them with alcohol, and/or not drink enough water so they dehydrate.
We have also noticed that non-consumers are more interested than consumers, but consumers are aware of their health. They are very interested to know about the drugs they use when we issue our flyers. In our experience it is better to approach people in person than to go into schools, because users and non-users at parties are very willing to talk about use, what they use and why they use. We think the personal approach is the best.
There are still some illegal house parties and we went to those too when we started developing these agreements. We tried to reach the organisers of illegal parties, and they also saw the benefits of following our guidelines, because they want great parties. When you throw good parties people will come back. Our rules should not be seen as ‘the rules’ but as steps for organising a good party.
Steve Dubios
The UK is pathetic when it comes to the free party scene and it was effectively forced out of England and Britain through terrible policies, the Criminal Justice Bill being one of them. Reform of the laws is definitely needed in Britain to get a sensible discussion started on the use of drugs across the board, which is not possible at the moment.
Mo Chaudhri
The whole legalised club scene has moved the arguments forward anyway. Most of the big clubs in England act very responsibly and they have contributed to the development of guidelines for good practice: provision of water, medics on the site and things like that. Most English club nights are very well regulated now. I returned from Ibiza last week and went to the first illegal house party for a long time. I was surprised at the organisation that went into it. I am pretty sure they did not have a license but people seemed to be having a good time. There were toilets, you could buy cheap water and the security was helpful. Everything has moved on and at this party it was all on their own initiative.
Within the club scene there are many different streams that are filling up what used to be a very small culture. It is very commercial now and a lot of business people are involved in the scene. A lot of people are interested in what you could term ‘customer care’, even on the illegal party scene. People are looking to provide a safer environment for people to enjoy themselves.
Although I work for one of the most professional club organisations in Europe, I think illegal parties have a role to play. A lot of them now are very well self-regulated. However, we have to work with authorities such as the police force and local health services and the illegality stops that happening. Maybe this is a political issue really: the government has to look at how it responds to people who want to organise parties which are currently illegal.
Thérèse Michaelis
Luxembourg has a party scene, but it is not as big a scene as in other countries of course. However, we are still concerned about ecstasy use. I do not really work in the scene but really behind the scene. Our ideas are a little bit different but strongly preferred to what has already been described.
We are really working with primary prevention. Primary prevention is what you can do before problems. We are concerned mainly with adults but that is mainly due to the philosophy of our institution. We need to focus on young people too, but also on the adults who make decisions: people who are responsible for young people. So we tried I think to look at their perspectives on the problem of ecstasy.
When we started to look at the scene in 1997, we had to ask if ecstasy use does exist, then how does the phenomenon link with society as a whole? If young people take pills so easily at parties, it is not just because they are young children who want to do such things but because they learnt to. We tried to find out why, and we did. We heard more and more about education, and teachers told us about children who take plenty of pills with them when they go on their holidays. We also questioned young people - both users and non-users of ecstasy. One of the questions we asked was about the consumption of legal pills and the consumption of illegal pills. We found that the occasional or habitual ecstasy users differed from colleagues who had never tried ecstasy in that they reported a much higher rate of use of other medicines.
Ecstasy users have a different risk perception: they take pills when they have problems at school, when they have a headache, when they cannot sleep and so on. We need to look at the advertising of medications in society, and we look at it in a broader way, with a more global approach and not only look at the recreational drug scene. It is often seen as something very special. I think it is much less special than we think. If they have a different risk perception, people think it has just come from heaven.
I think what Mr Calafat said was very important. First, you have to take interactive things, though information at school would have to come from adults young people can trust in, in a more or less objective way. On the other hand, harm reduction on-site is very important, but it is dependent consumers’ taking an interest in it. On the other hand, I see the global approach as very important. Even more important than knowing that young people take drugs or take pills at parties is knowing what politicians are saying, what their parents think. There is a great difference between talking about the dangers of the pill you are taking at a party, or discussing the issues in a home setting. What matters in our society? What are we doing with pills? When should we take them? How dangerous are they? Due to the fact that we often see young people making no distinction between what is a legal pill and what is not. As has already been explained, they take ‘pills’ no matter what they are. There is a big discrepancy between the promotion of legal drugs and the severe laws for illegal drugs. When we look at the young consumers, it makes no sense. It is also important for people working in the scene to be able to talk about the difference.
Arthur Schroers
There are traditional drugs and traditional patterns of use like ecstasy and speed and so on. Self-regulation means people know what they are doing every weekend and there are no surprises. However, there are problems when new drugs come on the market. For instance, last year in Germany GHB was mixed with ecstasy. Some users thought they were taking ecstasy and because they were not informed that a new drug was coming to the market, they had problems with it. This is one of the risks. We need an early warning system to know what is going on, to give people factual and competent information.
The other risk is a risk of modern life. Clubbing is a very fast culture. People may be in it for some years - maybe three, four or five years - and they are burning a lot of energy to experience it. This is a problem. People have to deal with their party life on one side and their daily life on the other side and there is sometimes a big problem in balancing it. People use it to escape real life, and they will have problems later on in managing their day-to-day lives. This is a second problem. In Germany we do not have so many problems with drug intoxication, people falling down at illegal parties or the setting. It is more the lifestyle that goes with consuming drugs. We have to react, to give information and on the other hand we have to promote communication with people and to ask what they are doing so that we will be given the opportunity to offer advice and help.
Steve Dubois
There are certainly risks with prohibition. Prevention should not be mentioned to users because all credibility will be lost. People use drugs. Our culture should be accepted as real and legitimate and as such protected under the political convention of the UN Charter of Human Rights. People manage with alcohol pretty much every day; you will not be chastised for having a hangover. I do not have any real problems, for example with housing or relationships, being quite a heavy drug user.
Mo Chaudhri
As an organiser of parties, I feel that the simple fact that people gather in large numbers in one place creates a lot of problems. There must be a similar problem with football matches. The aim of the organisation I represent is basically to reduce the risk of people injuring themselves. We acknowledge that there are people among our clients who are using alcohol and other illicit substances, so we have tried to come up with procedures to make the dance scene safer, to reduce the risks. There are emergency procedures for liasing with the local police authorities and the local emergency departments: there may be an ambulance present, provision of water and provision of a ‘chill out’ area. These are all old hat in a way for me because many organisations have taken the route towards developing a safe environment.
The risk is that some people prefer to carry on talking of prevention of drug use rather than acknowledge that drug use is within our culture. People are not going to stop taking drugs simply because they have been given scare stories. The government does not listen to what has actually happened within dance culture. The risk is that people in authority are ignoring what has actually happened within the dance scene. I used to go to football matches and even when it was still very dangerous and people used to fight, I continued to go.
Marco Langedijk
The biggest risk nowadays is that drug use is part of our culture. Young people who want to belong to the culture, want to belong also to the group who use drugs. They start to use not only drugs but combine alcohol with other drugs. They start to use more and more because they want to belong to the group, because they see the people who have been using it for years are using a lot. A lot more cocaine is being used at parties and a lot of the pills on the market nowadays contain speed: they try it, they do not feel what they want to feel with ecstasy so they use more speed and they are awake all weekend. Monday morning arrives and they are still completely out of it.
A personal approach is needed in all matters of risks. We need to ask people whether they know what drugs they are actually taking. We test everything that is confiscated (I personally test) and about 90% of pills confiscated at parties are not MDMA. About 80% are amphetamine or other drugs.
Thérèse Michaelis
We are not the first culture in history to use drugs but we are certainly the first to use every type of drug and to use them all together. That is really the risk. We do know what this does to our brains or to our bodies. It is very risky to be so indifferent. We must accept drug use as a reality, even if we do not to want it to be true, deal with it, and to give good information out in an interactive and responsible way as adults to our young people. It needs to be discussed with authorities and politicians that this is going on, so that they are aware of it.
Steve Dubois
In the UK we have several groups that can represent the culture in the appropriate forums and provide a voice for drug users. It is really important that the users’ voice is heard and safer initiatives are brought about as a result of information coming from the horse’s mouth. Change is very, very slow in the UK. We have representation on various committees and so forth but it can be like banging your head against a brick wall. We are getting there slowly.
Amador Calafat
In our study, we asked people whether they used illegal substances. After the epidemic of ecstasy there has been a great fear in the European institutions that after ecstasy there will be another new drug, then another. The European Parliament and the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction have jointly commissioned research into new substances. If ecstasy is not ecstasy then it raises a question. When we say ecstasy, we do not necessarily mean MDMA. The real question is whether there are new products appearing in the market that have the potential to become products that are misused.
Drug users, in a way, are very traditional. They have their combinations and special use patterns. As we see with GHB, there are some people who will experiment with new drugs. If they see that there are bad effects from drugs like GHB and there is just a small group of people trying it, it will not become as popular as ecstasy. The best information consumers have is their own experience, and the experiences of their friends. They can identify what new drug might be around and whether it has good effects for the party scene: GHB, for example, is a depressant, not a real party drug. Some new drugs will come and go, but the main drugs are still ecstasy, speed and LSD, and cocaine is on the increase.
Marco Langedijk
We must try to convince clubbers that it is also possible to have a party without drugs. A lot of people use drugs because they want to party on all night and into the morning. There are forms of ecstasy which are legal and are not as bad chemically as MDMA. It is possible to use these legal highs. We see it at our parties and the people who use it have the energy to go on, but you can talk with them and they know what they are doing. They will just sleep all-day on Sunday and on Monday they can go to work again. I feel we must look at what we can do with all the poisonous ecstasy tablets that are going around.
Arthur Schroers
It is not good for professionals to intervene. It is good to look at what is going on, to be open minded and then look what one can do on-site. There are existing sources of information and peer organisations. We need to look closely at what they do. It is no good telling people what to do.
Mo Chaudhri
I agree. The drug scene and the club scene changes so fast. It is always valuable to go to the people who are part of that scene and take their opinions forward rather than trying to impose from up top.
Thérèse Michaelis
Again, it is very important to have a more global approach and to look in a more shaded way at what is really going on. If you do not think you have a solution, go and discuss the problem with the people who go to clubs and parties.
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