Characteristics and social representation of ecstasy in Europe - Irefrea

young people interviewed considered that use is incited, 20,2% that it is tolerated and5,9% that it is essential to organise ways of controlled sale. Although the percentage ofthose who thought it was necessary to discourage its use was high, only 17,9% declareddecidedly that it was necessary to impede its use.The same article cited the results of an earlier survey made in twenty discos in theNortheast of the country using unstructured questionnaires. The majority of thoseinterviewed (some 250 in all), declared they devoted 50,55 hours a week to work andspent an average of 200-250.000 Italian Lire on weekend enjoyment. 25% were selfemployed,45% worked for employers and 1.5% were students. Almost all thoseinterviewed said they had used ecstasy, but almost exclusively at weekends.The “Giornale de S. Patrignano” written by the Therapeutic Community of the samename published a special dossier on ecstasy in its first three issues in 1997, in which itgave data and statistics, taken from official documents of the National Directorate ofAntidrug Services, on detentions, arrests, scientific and pharmacological relationshipson the effects of ecstasy and interview with young users.MASS MEDIAIn order to extrapolate the social representation on new drugs transmitted by thecommunications media, all the articles appearing in newspapers and magazinesbetween 1996 and 197 were reviewed. In general, the dailies limited themselves togiving news on arrests and detentions in a fairly neutral way, although underlining, witha certain insistence, that those detained in possession of this type of narcotic werepeople with no previous record, who studied and worked, and that they often belongedto high socio-economic groups. Only rarely do the articles assume an alarming tone,talking of “the propagation of the ecstasy phenomenon” and creating a close link withthe world of the night and accidents at weekends.The magazines turn a decidedly greater attention to the ecstasy phenomenon, innumerous articles which describe the modalities of use, the context, the underlyingmotivations. Most of all, they investigate the disco world which is undeniably associatedwith the use of this type of drug; the discos are described as temples where real andgenuine tribal rites take place, officiated by singers and disc-jockeys as the templepriests. The same architectural and structural characteristics seem to be focussed ongiving disc goers the impression of escaping from the confines of the space andreaching a place where space-time co-ordinates and relationships take on their owndimensions. A fundamental component of the rite is, of course, the music, which in thefashionable discos is strongly progressive and continues to change as the nightprogresses, with more and more obsessive rhythms (dream, virtual and then trance).The young people dance, body to body, but without real contact. Union is created bycloseness and not by communication. They move in time to the music which poundsout, more and more, under a kaleidoscope of strobic lights which makes them feel andseem automatons, moving in time to the beck and call of the singers150