‘Ethnobotanicals’ and ‘Spice zombies’: new psychoactive substances in the mainstream media

Abstract

This paper observes and compares discursive framings of new psychoactive substances (NPS) in parts of the mainstream media in Romania and the United Kingdom. It assembles a corpus of about 800 news items and looks into samples of reporting from 2009 to 2017. In Romania, NPS or more generally ‘ethnobotanicals’ were first associated with gullible youths experimenting with what appeared to be synthetic cannabinoids only for public attention to briefly move on to stimulant powders displacing heroin among injecting users, later on. In the UK, the synthetic cathinone mephedrone was presented by tabloids as a ‘menace’ to teenagers and other young users, only for synthetic cannabinoids to eventually be linked with rough sleepers and other vulnerable groups. Through this, qualitative distinctions are shown in the portraying of a middle-class notion of naïve but ‘clean’ youth, valuable in itself, and the portraying of abject underclass users, mostly as a threatening and contagious presence. Beyond alarmism and exaggeration, drug news reporting thus also appears rooted in class politics and structural inequalities where NPS meet with the lived conditions and spoiled identities of disadvantaged groups.

Keywords:

• Identity
• stigma
• prohibition
• discrimination
• media campaign
• discourse analysis
• critical drug studies
• policy
• new psychoactive substances
• drugs in the media

Notes

Disclosure statement

The author reports no conflicts of interest. The author alone is responsible for the content and writing of this article.

Notes

1 Figures based on Obae (2011) citing data provided by the Romanian Joint Industry Committee for Print and Internet; and the online audience auditor website www.trafic.ro.

2 The combined digital and print readership data are discussed by the Guardian (2012) Datablog based on the National Readership Survey.

3 According to Chapman (2017) citing ABC circulation figures.