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Abstract
Press items (N = 1327) about addiction related problems were collected from politically independent daily newspapers in Finland, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland from 1991, 1998, and 2011. A synchronized qualitative coding was performed for discerning the descriptions of the genesis to the problems in terms of described causes to and reasons for why they occur. Environmental explanations were by far the most common and they varied most between the materials. The analysis documents how the portrayals include traces of their contextual origin, relating to different media tasks and welfare cultural traditions. Meaning-based differences were also assigned to the kind of problems that held the most salience in the press reporting. A general worry over societal change is tied into the explanations of accumulating addiction problems and underpins the press reporting in all countries.
Notes
1 The reader is referred to Tilly, Charles (2008). Credit and Blame Princeton Univ. Press. Princeton, NJ for an important analysis about “blame.” Editor's note.
2 The reader is referred to Tilly, Charles (2006). Why. Princeton Univ. Press. Princeton, NJ for a stimulating analysis about generic “causative” reasons given in the West. Editor's note
3 The reason for the formal reform was a need to formalize the widespread practice of non-prosecuted small scale cannabis trade in many local shops. In the cabinet of liberals and social-democrats, a majority was in favour of further decriminalization, regulation, and uniformity in law enforcement. Based upon the national discretion in enforcement policy provided by the UN Single Convention, it de facto legalized small scale trade of cannabis products through a license system in so-called coffee shops, to be decided on a local level (Monshouwer et al, 2011). The government white paper was backed by almost all of the relevant stakeholders.
4 Municipalities buy services in the addiction treatment field from the A-Clinic Foundation and other providers. The A-Clinic Foundation, founded in 1955, operates to reduce alcohol, drug and other addiction problems by providing professional services. Through its regional units, the Foundation provides treatment, detoxification and rehabilitation. The Foundation serves about 28, 000 clients per year. It receives over 200, 000 outpatient visits and provides over 90, 000 days of rehabilitative treatment per year. Over 80, 000 people use the Foundation's web services every month. The services are funded mainly through contracts with municipalities.
5 Vladmir Hudolin, Yugoslavian social psychiatrist, who viewed alcoholism as being a “chronic illness” and a “social disturbance” created a system of professional based mutual peer group activity support systems for the treatment of alcoholics and their families in Zagreb in 1984 which focused on the social environment for targetted change. Hudolin was aware of AA and its 12 step ideology but the political-cultural conditions and the hegemony of Russia in east Europe at the time did not permit the use of “spirituality” or of “anonimity” as planned change considerations. These CTA's (Clubs of Treated Alcoholics) met at least one evening a week and could be open all day on weekends. Social and recreational activites could be part of the group's activities. The participants were asked to make a committment of 5 years. Each CTA group was limited to a number of families- on average no more than 15 families- after which a new group was created. Medical professionals were available for counseling, education and the prescription of disulfirum and some clubs included recovered alcoholics as paraprofessionals. The CTA model raised the issue about whether these were peer-based mutual support groups or professionally driven support groups Editor's note
6 This linear cause and effect hypothesis is based upon categorizing and differentially empowering drugs into two non-pharmacologically based classifications, soft drugs (such as cannabis) and hard drugs (such as heroin).Use of the former is posited, and empowered linearly, to lead to use of the latter. This thesis does not delineate the necessary multi-dimensional, complex, dynamic, non-linear, endogenous as well as exogenous conditions which are necessary for it to operate or not to operate. Editor's note.
7 In May 2012, the Dutch conservative government issued further restrictive measures on sales of cannabis in ‘coffee shops’. Sale of cannabis in ‘coffee shops’ was only allowed to Dutch residents, who had to register as a club member, and a cap of 2000 was put on coffee shop club membership. Recently, magic mushrooms and what have been moved to the list of “hard drugs.”. Similarly, yet still in preparation, is a change of law moving marihuana products with a THC content exceeding that of 15% to the list of drugs with high abuse potential. Dutch drug policy is far from stable, as some of the above rules have already been altered, partly adaptable to local option. “Abuse potential”, “addiction-sustaining”, or “abuse liability” are pseudo-scientific terms, consensualized and used by a range of stakeholders, to ‘explain the experimental, one-time, sporadic or ongoing non-medical use of selected drugs for their “drug experience” –which is an outcome of the interactions between the: (1) user (his/her expectations, drug use experience, personality, somatic, psychological, social, spiritual state of health, knowledge, etc.), (2) the environment-context of the drug's use and the (3) drug's actual pharmacological actions.
8 The reader is reminded that the concepts of “risk factors,” “vulnerabilitgy” as well as “protective factors,” are often noted in the literature, without adequately noting their dimensions (linear, non-linear; rates of development and decay; anchoring or integration, cessation, etc.), their “demands,” the critical necessary conditions (endogenously as well as exogenously; from a micro to a meso to a macro level) which are necessary for either of them to operate (begin, continue, become anchored and integrate, change as de facto realities change, cease, etc.) or not to and whether their underpinnings are theory-driven, empirically-based, individual and/or systemic stake holder- bound, based upon “principles of faith doctrinaire positions “personal truths,” historical observation, precedents and traditions that accumulate over time, conventional wisdom, perceptual and judgmental constraints, “transient public opinion.” or what. This is necessary to consider and to clarify if these terms are not to remain as yet additional shibboleths in a field of many stereotypes, tradition-driven activities and stakeholder agendas and objectives. Editor's note.
9 The DSK-affair is named after Dominique Strauss-Kahn, until his downfall in 2011 managing director of the International Monetary Fund. The affair took off when he was accused by a NY hotel chamber maid of rape. After that accusation, several other women stepped forward claiming to have been harassed or raped by DSK in the past. More recently, he faced additional French legal charges of being involved in running a prostitution ring.
10 The relatively recent substance use disorder related nosology of “dual diagnosis” is inadvertently misleading in that any substance use, of whatever type(s) can be “tagged”/diagnosed in each area of a user's life: medically, psychiatrically, socially, gender identification, educationally, spiritually, morally, IQ, SEC, ethnically, racially, legal-status, etc. depending upon the criteria used (whatever their underpinnings and validity) and the needs of the categorizers. Neither “substance use disorder” (in its variations) nor dual diagnosis, also in its variations offer, in a predictable sense, etiological, process and prognostic information which can be or which are used for effective treatment planning, implementation and evaluation of the range of heterogeneous drug users. “Dual diagnosis”, as an ongoing useful tool for a range of substance use(r) intervention stakeholders and gatekeepers can be usefully explored in the vast labeling theory literature. To paraphrase the General Semanticists: the map = // = the territory; the substance use disorder and/or the “dually diagnosed” = // = the substance user PERSON. Editor's note.
11 For example, Swaab, D. (2010) We zijn ons brein [We are our brain]; Amsterdam: Contact; Lamme V (2010) De vrije wil bestaat niet : over wie er echt de baas is in het brein.[Free will does not exist]. Amsterdam: Bakker; Kahn, R (2006) Onze hersenen: over de smalle grens tussen normaal en abnormaal [Our brain: about the thin line between noraml and abnormal] Amsterdam: Balans