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Composition of the drugs people are injecting: what we know, what we think, and what the media tell us - the myths of 'bad heroin' and 'pure heroin' explored and explained.
Ross Coomber, Reader in Sociology and Head of Sociology and Social Policy Subject Group, School of Law and Social Science, University of Plymouth
Abstract
It remains common for the police, the media and health professionals to state or allude to the common existence of poisonous adulterants or 'cutting agents' in street drugs such as heroin, cocaine and ecstasy - particularly in the aftermath of a tragic death. Other forms of 'authoritative' communication such as health warning email cascades and the 'Talk to Frank' information website reiterate such positions. The evidence however is in fact very different. Far less cutting than is believed takes place and when it does take place it is for different reasons to those commonly assumed. Street dealers actually account for very little cutting of street drugs and the substances that cutting agents actually consist of are not rat poison/strychnine; talcum powder or ground glass nor is it heroin in ecstasy or speed in cocaine. Ten years of internationally focussed research on this issue concludes that despite dangerous adulteration being a commonly accepted truth about!
drug market and drug dealer activity it is largely a myth. In addition to presenting some of the research findings that evidence this disparity between belief and reality this presentation will also consider the ways that health cascades and media reporting help to constantly prove that dangerous adulteration is a real and present danger for drug users.
There is also an article by Ross Coomber and Jon Dericott on this topic on this website, to read it, click here > Bad Heroin.
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Biography
Ross Coomber has been researching drug related issues for over twenty years. More recently he has focussed on the machinations of drug markets: what they look like, who populates them and how they should be understood. He first began researching issues around drug adulteration ('cutting')over ten years ago and his book 'Pusher Myths: Resituating the Drug Dealer', Free Association Books, 2006, was the culmination of that research.
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