From Criminals to Celebrities: Perceptions of “the Addict” in the Print Press from Four European Countries from Nineties to Today

Abstract

The article reviews portrayals of “the addict” in press items from Italy, Finland, Poland, and The Netherlands. The dataset consists of 1,327 items from four national newspapers published in 1991, 1998, 2011. The portrayals varied according to country, period, and type of addiction problem. Results can be read as four cases where different conceptualizations (“the sinner,” “the sick,” “the social problem,” “the criminal,” and “the famous”) assume diverse importance. These conceptual frames-of-reference are clearly neither unambiguous nor fixed. They are constantly modified and part of different trends.

Keywords :

• addict
• media
• normative theories
• social construction
• alcohol
• drugs
• tobacco
• addictive behavior

THE AUTHORS

Franca Beccaria, Ph.D., is a Sociologist, partner in Eclectica, a research institute in Torino (Italy), contract Professor at the EMDAS, European Master on Drug and Alcohol Studies, the Avogadro University (Novara) and at the University of Torino. Her main research interests are alcohol and culture, drinking styles, prevention, and sociology of health. Last book edited “Alcohol and generation. Changes in style and changing styles in Italy and Finland” (Carocci, 2010), and “Alcol e giovani. Riflettere prima dell'uso” (Alcohol and youth. To think before using) has been publish in 2013 by Giunti Editore.

Sara Rolando, MA., Sociologist, has been working as researcher in Eclectica (Torino) since 2007. She is involved in various national and international researches on alcohol, particularly on the topics of drinking culture and young people. Interested in comparative qualitative methods, she is Ph.D. student at the University of Helsinki.

Matilda Hellman, Ph.D., Docent (Adjunct Professor), sociology. Hellman is a researcher and research coordinator at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki. Her expertise comprise primarily: cultural and social aspects (perceptions definitions, images) of drinking, drug taking, and different addictive behaviors, as well as policy strategies to tackle lifestyle problems. She is affiliated at the University of Helsinki Centre for Research in Addiction, Control and Governance (CEACG).

Michał Bujalski, Ph.D., Sociologist and researcher in the Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology, Warsaw, Poland. His research interests stand at the intersection of sociology, cultural anthropology, and the public health perspective, covering issues of constructing the knowledge of substance use, with special emphasis on discourses of risk, modernity, and reflexivity of social actors.

Paul Lemmens, Ph.D., Associate Professor at Maastricht University, Department of Health Promotion. Interest in societal responses to alcohol and drugs use, and models of addiction. Published on public health issues, population models of alcohol use, risk assessments, methodological issues in survey research, and on portrayal of alcohol in the US print media.

Newspaper texts (all accessed through electronic news archive)

Finland (Helsingin Sanomat, http://www.hs.fi/  paivanlehti/#arkisto/)

HS. 25 April, 1991. Huumeiden uhreille lisää   hoitopaikkoja!

HS 10 May, 1998 (Sunday-section.). Ervamaa, T.   (1998). Disney-setä valvoo Rottaa.

Italy (La Stampa, http://www.lastampa.it/archivio-   storico/)

LS. 9 June, 1991. “Droga, le fragili difese del calcio.”

LS. 29 September, 1991. “Legò il figlio drogato sarà   prosciolto.”

LS. 28 November 1991. “Quanta comprensione per la   madre che uccide.”

LS. 22 January, 2011. “L'anoressia è una malattia.”

LS. 10 May, 2011. “«Non si possono curare i malati con   i veleni. Bisogna prevenire» Il sottosegretario Giov-   anardi boccia il metodo.”

LS. 19 July, 2011. “Quel giornalista pagato per drogarsi   con le star.”

LS. 6 August, 2011. “Il ministro Fazio lancia l'allarme   sulla dipendenza da social network: una droga,   come l'azzardo.”

LS. 8 September, 2011. “Giovani e alcol.”

Poland (Gazeta Wyborcza, http://www.archiwum.   wyborcza.pl/)

GW. 10 September, 1998. “Precz z ulic”   (1998_DRUG_news_1)

GW. 31 August, 1998. “Przeciw grzechowi głupoty”   (1998_ALC_short_1)

GW. 16 May, 1998. “Przychodzili z lodami i heroiną”   (1998_ALC_DRUG_report_1)

GW. 14 February, 2011. “Nie zsyłać do kontenerów”   (2011_ALC_report_1)

GW. 14 January, 2011. “Heroina za darmo”   (2011_DRUG_report_2)

The Netherlands (http://academic.lexisnexis.nl/)

NRC. November 10, 201.1 “Zwervers komen weer op   straat”

NRC. April 19, 2011. “Streng straffen is eerder een   geloofsartikel; Uitschakelingseffect is heel beperkt”

NRC. September 13, 1991. “Commissaris wil drugs in   ziekenfondspakket”

NRC. December 7, 1991. “Voorzitter Koloskov van de   voetbalbond probeert te redden wat er nog te redden   valt;De sport is stervende, net als de Sovjet-Unie   zelf”

NRC. October 22, 2011. Ik kan de ellende beperken”

NRC. June 27, 1991. “Achteloze moordenares”

NRC. November 11, 2011. “Preken tegen de zonde van   de fles; Urker kerken werken samen om alcoholmis-   bruik in het vissersdorp tegen te gaan”

Notes

³ AGORA.pl. http://www.agora.pl/agora/1,110780,9274931,Gazeta_ Wyborcza.html—accessed 8.3.2013.

⁴ The reader is asked to consider that the term “recovery” is an overloaded container concept, catch-all-code, in the substance use-misuse intervention field, which is bounded by culture, time, place and stakeholder values, agendas, interests, and influences. Although there is no consensualized definition by a range of involved deliverers of care and services for its targeted populations recent definitions include the US: (1) Recovery from substance dependence is a voluntarily maintained lifestyle characterized by sobriety, personal health, and citizenship. Sobriety refers to abstinence from alcohol and all other non-prescribed drugs. The Betty Ford Institute Consensus Panel, Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment 33 (2007) 221–228; and (2) the UK Drug Policy Commission: “Recovery is a process, characterized by voluntarily maintained control over substance use, leading toward health and well-being and participation in the responsibilities and benefits of society” The UK Drug Policy Commission, Recovery Consensus Group Policy Report, July 2008; www.ukpc.org.uk, “Recovery” is most often associated with abstinence. Its dimensions, and the necessary internal and external, micro and macro level conditions for its achievement and sustainment, and the person's necessary enabling resources as well as interfering flaws and limitations, have yet to be delineated in treatment ideologies such as harm reduction, quality-of-life, and conflict resolution. Editor's note.

⁵ The reader is asked to consider that concepts and processes such as “risk” and “protective” factors are often noted in the lay as well as professional literature, without adequately delineating their dimensions (linear, non-linear, rates of development, sustainability, cessation, etc.), their ‘“demands,”’ the critical necessary conditions (endogenously as well as exogenously; micro to macro levels), which are necessary for them to operate (begin, continue, become anchored, and integrate, change as de facto realities change, cease, etc.) or not to operate and whether their underpinnings are theory-driven, empirically-based, individual and(or systemic stake holder-bound, historically- bound, based upon ‘“principles of faith”’ or what. This is necessary to clarify, if possible, if these terms are not to remain as yet additional shibboleths in a field of many stereotypes. Editor's note.

⁶Since the 1970s an extensive methadone maintenance program is operative (10,000 users), and since 2007 is supplemented by a heroin maintenance program for about 700 heroin users.

⁷ The categories “soft” and “hard drugs” are misleading, unscientific categories of active pharmacological substances that have been and continue to be used by individual and systemic stakeholders for achieving a range of goals and objectives that include the legal and/or social status of selected “drugs” in which their pharmacological actions and/or the simplified, albeit complex, “drug experiences”—interactions between person, place, and psychoactive substance—are not critical criteria. Editor's note.

⁸ The reader is reminded that the medicalizing of “addiction” to selected psychoactive substances (substance use disorder) as well as to selective human behaviors in the DSM IV and V (American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), 4th Ed.; 5th Ed. American Psychiatric Association: Washington, DC, 1994; 2014) is a relatively recent outcome of active and influential stakeholders. There are many disease models; not just one. These include, among others, biochemical-based models, actuarial, functional, experiential, social, political, religious-spirit-animism, economic, and consumer-based models. Second, each have their own critical definitions, criteria, goals and agendas, constituencies, indicated and contra-indicated techniques and services, “healers” and change agents, preferred sites for intervention, temporal parameters, and stake holders. Each has their unique ethical associated issues. An important consequence of such “disease mongering” labeling is that it does not sufficiently serve basic diagnostic purposes of gathering needed information in order to make a needed decision nor give the minimum of needed evidence-based information—etiology, process, and prognosis—for effective intervention planning if and when it is needed. Editor's note.