Getting our kicks from cocaine

Present Tense: If someone was to write a book about the media's addiction to cocaine stories in Celtic Tiger Ireland, it might feature a story from an unnamed addict within RTÉ, talking about how the broadcaster first became hooked on the idea of making the two-part series High Society.

"I always knew that lots of people in my profession were into cocaine," he might say. "Every week it was 'cocaine-this' and 'cocaine-that'. Especially the print hacks. Always good for a readership high, they said. So, once we got involved, we chopped out fat, one-hour lines, and went at them for two whole weeks. Other journalists couldn't get enough, all of them queuing up to join in the frenzy - even though they'd already overdosed on it when the book came out only a few weeks earlier.

"So we went for it big time, even though it wasn't grade-A stuff. It was cut with all sorts of mixing agents, such as reconstructions, voiceovers, flashy lights, hyperbole and shots of the narrator looking all pensive. And in the end, people questioned our integrity. But it's hard not to get addicted to that ratings hit."

The Irish media loves cocaine - or at least the stories of it. But the epidemic of coverage reflects something more than the drug's apparent popularity. It reflects both the public and media obsession with excess and glamour; with money and crime; and with hyperbole and moral panic. It shows up the belief that a problem is only really a problem when it affects the middle-classes. It continues a long tradition in which the press relays lurid tales of bright young things tearing up the town. And it hardens the belief that our new-found wealth is destroying this country.

But more importantly, it too often reflects a refusal by society as a whole to talk about the drugs issue in any meaningful way.

THIS IS NOT to suggest that many people do not have a problem with cocaine, or that it doesn't have a societal impact. But all drugs, both illegal and legal, impact on society, and for the media to isolate the cocaine problem, magnify it, sensationalise it and finally moralise about it, only continues to retard the debate.

It would have been far more interesting if RTÉ had passed up the opportunity to make High Society and instead examined drugs in a broader way. The broadcaster's current affairs programmes have occasionally featured debates on whether drugs should be legalised as a way of combating both addiction and, more obviously, criminality. But in giving the cocaine story such a superficial but bombastic airing, it was only finding comfort in what we have already read and heard many times over, rather than addressing the complex issues we don't seem so eager to face.

Any proper examination of drugs would, of course, have to look at the problems that accompany them - both on a public and personal level. It would be ridiculous to suggest, just because the media may exaggerate the drug problem, that such problems don't exist at all. Only this week, the Dublin City Coroner's Court was told that a 30-year-old woman died last year of MDMA toxicity, caused by taking too much ecstasy.

Meanwhile, any occupant of our major cities will be familiar with the heroin problem, which, while it receives coverage, is not considered the stuff of glossy magazine spreads unless it features rock stars or supermodels (ideally both at the same time).

But proper coverage of drugs would also have to pose the awkward questions. Legalisation would have to be discussed, obviously. It would have to look at death rates compared to usage. It would also have to examine addiction rates, and why it is that we drift towards the top of European surveys for that statistic.

MORE HONESTLY, THOUGH, it would have to front up to why it is that many people have at some time smoked cannabis, taken E, used amphetamines and, yes, snorted cocaine, without it having derailed their life in any way. In fact, there are great numbers who have done all this (possibly on the same night) and actively enjoyed themselves, caused no harm to anyone, and (I should insert a hippy alert here) genuinely broadened their minds and experiences.

There will have been plenty watching High Society who will have found themselves thinking back to their own use of drugs. It may been a once-only experiment, regular use for a time, or an ongoing and occasional thing. Not all of them would want to talk openly about this - because it's both illegal and culturally taboo. But as it is, they won't be asked anyway.