Characteristics and social representation of ecstasy in Europe - Irefrea

planning and integration certainly does not lead to a reduction in repressive measures -quite possibly, it may even have the opposite effect- but it does lead to a decrease in theeffectiveness of these types of measures in practice. We should also be bearing in mindthat designer drugs raise new problems in this field since, from the repressive point ofview, the classic scenario no longer applies -producer countries in the Third World, hugedrug trafficking rings, young users in Western country- since, on many occasions, thesedrugs are being made in clandestine laboratories, located locally or even within theboundaries of the European Union, thus simplifying the production and distributionchains so that there is no necessity to resort to the big Mafia organisations. Anotherimportant point is that the classic image, of the more or less a marginal heroin addictassociated with delinquency, is disappearing.At the same time, there is a debate among those who defend the continuity oftraditional strategies for reduction in demand or primary prevention and also amongthose who consider that these are not effective and that one should opt for harmminimisation strategies only.From the point of view of the defenders of harm minimisation, abstention would bebased on the repressive state model and on medical and religious paternalism(Newcombe et al., 1992b). Strategies based on this model are moralist and expressvalues that correspond to a “right thinking society” and have no connection with thereality of other sectors of society. These characteristics are the reason for the failure ofthese types of policies.According to its defenders, the harm minimisation model would, on the contrary, befounded on the scientific public health model “with deep roots in humanitarianism andliberalism” paternalism (Newcombe et al., 1992b). In other words, it would respectindividual freedom of decision and responsibility for one’s own conduct, above all.With this model of intervention, the first step is to accept that drug use is a reality,that you cannot close your eyes to it and that individuals are free to choose whether ornot they use drugs. In the face of this, there is nothing to be done except to provideobjective information on drugs, without moralising, and on how to take them so that anyharm is minimal for both the individual and for society as a whole. The undeniablesuccess of these strategies in treating heroin addicts has prompted some to extend thesame strategy to the field of prevention, and to other types of drugs.The detractors of this harm minimisation intervention strategy also have theirarguments. Firstly, that there has never been a true preventive effort in Europe to reducethe demand and, even less of one, in the case of preventive campaigns based onexperimentation and evaluation. In addition, if one is speaking about a failure of thetraditional prevention strategies, there are also no guarantees, at this particular time, thatthe strategies based on preventing harm are effective and that they do not have acounterproductive effect by creating new problems. Nor is there any evaluation of thesecampaigns. The success of these strategies with heroin addicts -marginal people, with asevere addiction, difficult to fight by other methods, with all the problems of AIDS...-would not automatically authorise the use of these same strategies with young people in191