Will Keith Allen's 'balanced' televised drug stunt cover addiction, infection, psychosis, depression and death?
![Stunt: Actor Keith Allen is to be filmed taking pure ecstasy for a Channel 4 documentary](http://web.archive.org./web/20161010164150im_/http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/07/17/article-2174859-057E8ED2000005DC-427_233x423.jpg)
Stunt: Actor Keith Allen is to be filmed taking pure ecstasy for a Channel 4 documentary
Keith Allen is a fine actor. He is also a popular celebrity well known for his drug use and flagrant contempt of the laws that ban the use of narcotics, to the extent that he is reported to have used his daughter Lily to help him sell drugs at Glastonbury.
Keith has gone on the defensive after it was revealed that he is involved in a ‘serious and balanced’ Channel 4 ‘documentary’ purporting to show reactions of participants to controlled substances, that is illegal drugs.
He said on ITV1′s This Morning: 'If you think that I’m glamourising the taking of drugs by spending an hour and 20 minutes for two consecutive Mondays in an MRI scanning machine then you’re insane.' He went on to describe the programme as a ‘forensic analysis’ investigating drugs.
I still stand by my original comments. This is reckless and pointless because the whole reason that we have the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act is that we had built up a repository of evidence showing the detrimental effects of the non-medical use of various groups of drugs. We have archives of research covering both the positive medical benefits of drugs and their side effects, and the drastic results of drug misuse.
This research isn’t at a standstill as we still have much to learn about modes of action and transmission, but it’s laughable to suggest that this is a serious scientific study even with Professor David Nutt of Imperial College at the helm. For starters, the exclusion criteria of a study always includes an individual’s medical history, and former use of illegal substances that have known permanent effects on the body would rule out a candidate, including Mr Allen.
It was Professor Nutt who previously suggested horse-riding is more dangerous than taking ecstasy. He may be right when it comes to the in-the-moment risk, but his analogy then crashes.
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Once you get off a horse the risk is over; with drugs the risks endure, and this is another reason why a programme looking at the initial reaction to drug taking is pretty pointless. The reactions from drugs can last a lifetime, vary between individuals, between the strength of drug taken (not usually known on the street) and between drugs. Whilst the initial euphoria can be impressive (and having had medical dia-morphine, more commonly known as heroin, as my pain-killer after a botched epidural I can testify to the ‘high’) will this programme be capturing the down-stream wash of physical and mental collapse?
Quite how this programme’s content contributes to the apparent discussion of a “very calm look at the question of legality and illegality of drugs” is trumped up justification. Maybe the addiction, collapsed veins, bacterial infections, abscesses, high blood pressure, muscle spasm, blurred vision, arthritis, psychosis, depression and death won’t feature as they aren’t the initial ‘reactions’ experienced?
From what we know of this programme, I can’t quite see it as anything other than a traditional Channel 4 publicity stunt. And I note that the Home Office spokesman said: 'Any unlicensed possession of Class A drugs is a criminal offence, unless this is done under authorisation from the Home Office,' without saying that this programme did have the authorisation. Hmmm.