New paper in Contemporary Drug Problems journal with Helen Keane and Harriet Sherlock on Australian newspaper coverage of dependence on pharmaceuticals.
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Innocence is a key framing device in the media coverage, & this is racially coded as white - which also has the effect of reproducing assumptions about problematic, blameworthy drug use as characteristic of an imagined “underclass”
The reporting diverges from media standard media focus on crime, moral failings & personal trauma, in favour of references to innocent mistakes, legitimate medical conditions, & involving an unsuspecting group of well-meaning people who the system has failed.
The articles rely on examples of middle-class people dependent on opioids, who are presented as ‘unlikely addicts’. This is brought to life through humanising stories about a ‘Melbourne mum’ and a ‘country boy’ whose addictions are unplanned, accidental, & ‘innocent’
Just as the problem of pharmaceutical dependence is presented through middle-class examples & is coded as white, so too are the solutions: like yoga, centralised systems of medication surveillance.
We argue media articles differentiate pharmaceutical dependence from ‘drug addiction’, protecting those represented from stigmatisation as ‘addicts’, but also separating them from forms of mutual aid and harm reduction developed by and for people who use drugs.
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