'Zombies', 'cannibals',and'super humans': a quantitative and qualitative analysis of UK news media reporting of the cathinone psychostimulants labelled 'monkey dust'

Background: News media helps set the agenda for public thinking and policy responses to drugs use, by framing substances, substance use and people who use drugs (PWUD) within a ‘drug scare’ narrative. Using the example of ‘monkey dust’, an inconsistently identified set of substituted cathinone psychostimulants, we explored how an emerging drug ‘problem’ was reported in the UK news media, and what this tells us about prevailing attitudes towards substance use and PWUD. Methods: A quantitative and qualitative analysis of UK news media (n = 368 articles) representations of ‘monkey dust’ was conducted, and the underlying discourses identified. Findings: Monkey dust reporting met the criteria of a drug scare, which was predominantly underpinned by discourses of criminality and legality. An unrepresentative, somewhat distorted, incomplete and simplified account of monkey dust as new and dangerous, and as requiring urgent legislative action, was provided. PWUD were dehumanised, criminalised, and stigmatised and the complexities of use, and responses other than those that fell within the status quo, obscured. Conclusions: To prevent the negative impact such reporting may have on PWUD, it is important that relevant stakeholders, including advocacy groups, academics, and researchers, work with journalists to change the way drug use and PWUD are reported

Expansion of HCV treatment access to people who have injected drugs through effective translation of research into public health policy:Scotland's experience

Seven years have elapsed since the Scottish Government launched its Hepatitis C Action Plan – a Plan to improve services to prevent transmission of infection, particularly among people who inject drugs (PWID), identify those infected and ensure those infected receive optimal treatment. The Plan was underpinned by industrial scale funding (around £100 million, in addition to the general NHS funding, will have been invested by 2015), and a web of accountable national and local multi-disciplinary multi-agency networks responsible for the planning, development and delivery of services. Initiatives ranged from the introduction of testing in specialist drug services through finger-prick blood sampling by non-clinical staff, to the setting of government targets to ensure rapid scale-up of antiviral therapy. The Plan was informed by comprehensive national monitoring systems, indicating the extent of the problem not just in terms of numbers infected, diagnosed and treated but also the more penetrative data on the number advancing to end-stage liver disease and death, and also through compelling modelling work demonstrating the potential beneficial impact of scaling-up therapy and the mounting cost of not acting. Achievements include around 50% increase in the proportion of the infected population diagnosed (38% to 55%); a sustained near two-and-a-half fold increase in the annual number of people initiated onto therapy (470 to 1050) with more pronounced increases among PWID (300 to 840) and prisoners (20 to 140); and reversing of an upward trend in the overall number of people living with chronic infection. The Action Plan has demonstrated that a Government-backed, coordinated and invested approach can transform services and rapidly improve the lives of thousands. Cited as “an impressive example of a national strategy” by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, the Scottish Plan has also provided fundamental insights of international relevance into the management of HCV among PWID