The Media, Alcohol, and Illegal Drugs

During wartime, the media generally engages in propaganda in order to bolster support for the government’s policies. The so-called “War on Drugs” is no different.

Consider the following headline, from the BBC:

Cranberries singer O’Riordan died by drowning

O’Riordan had fallen into a stupor due to excessive consumption of a legal drug known as alcohol. She drowned in her bathtub. Her death was treated as a tragic accident.

A few years later, TV star Matthew Perry fell into a stupor due to excessive consumption of a drug named Ketamine. He drowned in his bathtub. His death was treated as an outrage, as if was killed by drug pushers.

Here’s Reason magazine:

Last month, federal prosecutors indicted five people for the overdose death of a celebrity the previous year. Three have pleaded guilty so far, and this month, a trial date was set for the other two. . . . For one thing, Perry did not overdose, and his drugs were not tainted; while the medical examiner listed ketamine as the primary contributing factor in his death, the most direct cause was drowning. “Matthew Perry drowned while intoxicated on ketamine the same way people routinely drown while intoxicated on alcohol,” Ryan Marino, a doctor of toxicology and addiction medicine at University Hospitals in Cleveland, told Filter.

Andrew Stolbach, a physician and toxicologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital, “said it’s unlikely Perry would have died if he was not in a body of water,” VICE reported last year. “It’s really dangerous to use sedative drugs in a pool, especially alone, or a bathtub,” Stolbach added.

Of course, no attempt was made to find the people that sold Dolores O’Riordan her alcohol.  

Reasonable people may disagree as to the optimal policy for illegal drugs (or alcohol).  Reason suggests that Perry might be alive today if Ketamine were not illegal without a prescription:

Ketamine was developed for use in anesthesia and pain relief before gaining a reputation as a club drug in the 1980s. Recent evidence suggests it can be used to treat persistent depression and addiction. In the right context, it’s also quite safe: A 2022 scientific review of 312 overdoses and 138 deaths in which ketamine was present found “no cases of overdose or death related to the use of ketamine as an antidepressant in a therapeutic setting.” . . . As investigators would discover, Perry was staying clean through therapeutic ketamine treatments but eventually became addicted to the treatment itself; when doctors refused to increase his dosage, he sought the drug elsewhere.

Obviously, we cannot be sure what would have happened if Perry had continued to have access to a legal source of the drug.  O’Riordan drowned despite access to legal alcohol.  Perry might have done the same.  All intoxicating drugs are dangerous to some extent.  But it’s also clear that illegal drug use creates greater risks, as it is much more difficult to ensure that one has the desired dose.  Many fentanyl deaths occur in people who were not even aware that they were consuming fentanyl.

My concern here is with the media.  If voters are to make intelligent decisions about drug policy, it is essential that the media not become an arm of government propaganda.  Thus far, they have failed to provide objective information on the effects of drug use, as they report the consequences of illegal drug use in a radically different fashion from the way the report on the consequences of legal drugs such as alcohol.  Please, just give us the facts.