Characteristics and social representation of ecstasy in Europe - Irefrea

NETHERLANDSIn Holland, there have been several harm minimisation campaigns at parties anddiscos, the majority of which appear in section 8.4.3, so that we will only include a briefsummary here.The most important campaign was the one entitled Safe House Campaign carriedout by the Drugs Advies Buro (Drugs Orientation Office in August de Loor) anddesigned to minimise the harmful effects of synthetic drug use.The Jellinek Institut also distributed leaflets warning of the dangers and givingadvice on preventive measures. In some of them, there was emphasis on thecomposition of the tablets, indicating that they do not always contain MDMA but maywell consist of other designer drugs such as MDA, hallucinogens such as LSD or othertypes of drug like Ketamine.Other campaigns were carried out, at parties themselves, this time by a religiousgroup who try to prevent young people from joining the rave parties and advise them togo back home. This is the case of the Naar House -go back home- campaign pursuedby an evangelist group whose members place themselves outside the entrance to theparty, with a coach, and invite the youngsters to talk to them and in the ensuingconversation they attempt to persuade them to leave.There are also many and varied information channels through which those interestedcan obtain answers to any of their questions on every type of drug -addresses on theInternet, either by government organisations or by music or raver associations,advertisements on television, televisions programmes dealing with drugs, etc.HOLLAND, GERMANY AND THE UNITED KINGDOM(Project for a European Model for the Prevention of Ecstasy Use).The Jellinek Institut (Amsterdam, Holland), the Büro fûr Suchprävention (Hamburg,Germany) and Lifeline (Manchester, U.K.) have combined forces to design and test amodel for the prevention of ecstasy use which would be valid for several Europeancountries in spite of the legal and political differences in place in each one (Rabes,1997).The Project was designed on the basis of four principles:1) Harm minimisation: the participants in the project considered that theminimisation strategy was hardly being used in spite of the widespread diffusionof ecstasy even although it had been shown that by putting it into practice in GreatBritain, there was a reduction in drug use related accidents. From their point ofview, the alternative of restrictive measures on use contributed even more tocreating an atmosphere of distrust and double standards.2) Differences based on gender. In this survey, it was decided to ascertain thedifferences in gender as distinctions in respect of age, motivation and use patternshad been noticed.206