research – Drugs in Digital Society

Would you like to do a PhD on drug checking with me?

The Loop Australia’s drug checking service at Earth Frequency Festival, May 2024 (Qld)

The supply of illegal drugs is unregulated due to prohibition. Unregulated supply results in drugs being sold that are of unknown content and strength, leading to overdoses which are sometimes fatal. Drug checking (a.k.a. pill testing) services (DCS) are a health response to this problem: members of the public submit substances of concern for chemical analysis and get the results back alongside a tailored health intervention. They empower people who use drugs to make informed decisions about their health, while also enabling communities and authorities to amplify health messages when toxic adulterations are detected.

While relatively new in Australia, DCS have been established for 50+ years in 30+ countries. But there is still much we don’t know. Knowledge gaps include: (1) the medium-to-long-term effectiveness of DCS on reducing drug harms, (2) the effects of the public outputs of DCS on drug harms, (3) how best to leverage community experiences of toxic drug outbreaks, and (4) how best to reach diverse groups.

A PhD candidate is sought to lead a research project to address one or more of these knowledge gaps, supervised by me/Monica, who leads a research program focused on emerging drug market trends. I have a partnership with The Loop Australia, offering access to service-level data and internship possibilities. The candidate may have an academic background in qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods approaches to research. People with living or lived experience of substance use and/or who have worked with people who use drugs are encouraged to apply.

To be considered for this PhD Scholarship at RMIT University, applicants must meet the Eligibility criteria and English requirements as described on the How to Apply page, and should ideally meet the selection criteria below:

Hold a degree (Honours or Masters) with a demonstrated research component. HD level grades are desirable. Relevant disciplines include but are not limited to psychology, sociology, criminology, health sciences, epidemiology.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with an ability to explain technical detail to non-technical audiences.
Previous demonstrated experience conducting quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods research with humans on health or social topics (please describe what kinds of research you have experience with, what roles you played in these projects, and analysis techniques, approaches and software you have used)
Previous interest in, or knowledge of, the drugs and harm reduction fields. While demonstration of existing knowledge of the drugs field is desirable, candidates with demonstrated research expertise in other fields are still welcome to apply.
People with living or lived experience of substance use and/or who have worked with people who use drugs are encouraged to apply. If you do not hold one of the qualifications detailed under the Eligibility criteria on the How to Apply page, you will only be considered for scholarship if you have previous publications or significant research experience at the discretion of the project lead.

All applicants should email the following to Dr Monica Barratt, monica.barratt@rmit.edu.au

a cover letter, which should directly address each of the key selection criteria (see above)
your academic transcript
your Curriculum Vitae, including a section on research skills and their application
a 1-2 page research proposal focusing on responding to unregulated drug markets with drug checking services

The research proposal is a key part of the application process where applicants must demonstrate the value of their research and their suitability for scholarship selection.

Your proposal should be developed under the following headings:

Title
Research questions you plan to investigate in the context of existing research/literature
Methodology/research tasks required to undertake the research
Significance and impact of the research

Applications close Sunday 20th October 2024!

Following the scholarship closing date, these applications will be assessed, with applicants making the first round invited to a casual chat. Second round applicants will be asked to participate in an interview.

Special issue of Drug & Alcohol Review – music festivals

As Deputy Editor for Drug and Alcohol Review, I was asked to write an introduction to a virtual special issue collecting papers from the journal published in the last 4 years on this topic. The papers are available for free download here.

The full introduction is reproduced below:

Dance music festivals are typically outdoor events where electronic dance music is performed to large crowds of festivalgoers. These events have emerged as sites of alcohol and other psychoactive substance use, particularly MDMA (or ‘ecstasy’), other stimulants, as well as psychedelic drugs. While some such festivals are single-day events (typically held in urban locations), they are commonly held over multiple days in non-urban locations, with attendees typically camping at the event for 3 to 5 days (sometimes longer). This virtual issue of Drug and Alcohol Review contains 11 papers published in the journal since 2018 on the topic of alcohol and other drug use and harms, and associated policy and monitoring responses, in these festival settings.

Seven of these papers engaged with populations of festival attendees, typically through surveying them to collected self-reported information [1-7]. The typical age of surveyed festivalgoers was young, with median and average ages in the mid-20s across all studies [1-7]. Four of these studies involved in-situ data collection [4-7] – that is, festivalgoers completed the surveys at the festival they were attending – with the remaining three studies conducted through web surveys that asked people to recall and report on their behaviours at previous festival attendances [1-3]. Only one of these studies combined biological measurement with self-report, and in this study, only the use and markers of alcohol consumption were measured [7]. Illegal drug use, and specifically the use of MDMA, was the focus of the remaining 6 studies of festival attendees [1-6]. Event-based measurement – that is, where questions are focused on characteristics of a specific event (usually the current event or the most recent event attended) – was employed among 3 studies [3, 5, 7], while the use of scenarios and measurement of future intended behaviours was employed by 3 studies [1, 4, 6] – all exploring hypothetical responses by festivalgoers to scenarios where drug checking services were available.

Of the 7 articles reporting research with festival attendees, 4 studies were measuring patterns of alcohol and other drug use [2, 3, 5, 7]; in particular, higher-risk behaviours and harm reduction practices. Two papers confirm that double dropping – taking two (or more) MDMA pills or capsules simultaneously – is prevalent among Australian festivalgoers, with Grigg et al. [3] reporting 48% of festivalgoers (who used MDMA) double dropping at the last festival they attended (data collected 2016) and Healey et al. [5] also reporting 48% double dropped (or intended to do so later in the day) at the festival event where they were surveyed (data collected 2019-2020). Healey et al. also reported on the practice of preloading: consuming all of their drugs prior to entering the (single-day) festival. Of the festival-goers who reported drug use during the festival, 33% reported preloading. This behaviour appeared to be related to how the festivals they attended were policed. Those who agreed that knowledge of or anticipation of police or police dog presence at the festival had altered their drug use patterns were at over double the odds (adjusted odds ratio 2.2) of reporting preloading their drugs before entering the festival. While double dropping practices may be based on past experiences of MDMA pills being relatively weak in Australia, with the rise of high strength pills and capsules, double dropping is much more likely to result in MDMA toxicity. Healey et al.’s findings that preloading with drugs prior to events is commonplace and is a response to policing practices is concerning and should spur more urgent action to overhaul such the relatively heavy-handed policing practices that occur at music festivals in Australia.

The web survey of an international sample of festivalgoers (primarily from Spain, USA and Australia) reported by Fernández Calderón et al. [2] focused on harm-reducing practices, such as avoiding mixing depressants (69%) and limiting the quantities of drugs consumed (62%). Overall, fewer adverse health events were reported by respondents who also took harm reducing measures. Norman et al.’s [7] study used multiple measures of alcohol drinking over a prolonged drinking event, finding that a diverse set of 4 measurements contributed unique and valuable information. Importantly – while only conducted with 14 participants – this study demonstrates feasibility of continuous alcohol monitoring and the use of unobtrusive biological techniques among the festivalgoer population.

The remaining 3 papers that engaged festivalgoer populations were focused on how people might respond to a drug checking service [1, 4, 6]. Taken together, in the Australian context where drug checking has been formally available at only two single events in the ACT [8], these studies indicate a strong desire to use drug checking services if available, with an on-site service (94%) somewhat more popular than a fixed-site or off-site (external to the festival) service (85%) [1]. Lack of support for drug checking from government and police was a considerable barrier, with 94% reporting that they would not use a service if there was the possibility of arrest [1]. One political barrier to drug checking introduction has been the contention that drug checking services would increase the use of MDMA among this population, by ‘giving the green light’ to use drugs. Two of these studies provide data to refute this contention [4, 6]. Hollett and Gately [6] found that both people who had never used MDMA and people with MDMA experience reduced their MDMA risk across on-site and fixed-site drug checking scenarios; however, they noted that people with MDMA experience were less likely to reduce risk than MDMA naïve participants in some situations, for example, when the hypothetical drug checking result showed a high strength MDMA pill or a pill substituted with PMA/PMMA. It may be that certain risks (higher strength; PMA/PMMA) may be perceived as less concerning to those with more experience then to those who are MDMA naïve. Murphy et al. [4] report that neither group (MDMA experienced and MDMA naïve) reported an increased intention to use MDMA in scenarios were drug checking was available. Subjective norms (e.g. items like “Most of my ecstasy-using friends tell me that I should test/check the content of my pill before I use ecstasy” [9]) were associated with intended use of both on-site and fixed-site drug checking services. These studies also found that festival goers were willing to co-pay for a drug checking services – $12 [6] or $10 [1] for an on-site test.

The remaining 4 papers that did not report on festivalgoer populations all focused on the topic of drug checking at music festivals, and included: a representative survey of the Australian population measuring attitudes towards drug checking at music festivals [10], two policy analysis papers on the topic of drug checking in the Australian jurisdictions of NSW and the ACT [11, 12], and one paper from Italy reporting descriptive drug sample data from an operational drug checking service [13]. Through these papers we learn that almost two-thirds of the Australian public (64%) support “pill testing at music festivals” while 22% are opposed, 14% neutral and 1% did not answer. Political affiliation was associated with support, with voters for the two main Australian conservative parties the least likely to support this initiative [10]. The two policy analysis papers utilised document analysis to create detailed timelines of critical policy and advocacy events, utilising news coverage, transcripts of television specials on the topic of drug checking, parliamentary transcriptions and reports [11, 12]. Ritter’s analysis of the debate in NSW synthesises the narratives used by those in favour and those opposed to drug checking, finding that both sides appeared to share a basic goal of ‘saving lives’ but as the beliefs and values underlying this goal differed, the debate continued to remain polarised [11]. Sommerville et al. compared one jurisdiction who had successfully supported drug checking (ACT) with one that had failed to do so (NSW) using the Advocacy Coalition Framework [12]. The key difference identified was that the dominant coalition in ACT was health-led, whereas the dominant coalition in NSW was led by law enforcement. For policy change on drug checking to occur in NSW, both core and secondary beliefs of the dominant law enforcement policy required shifting, a shift that rarely occurs [12]. The final paper in this special issue reported on an active drug checking service in Italy in the festival and party context, focusing on the drugs detected and the use of a Raman spectrometer in the field [13]. Raman instruments are often used for policing application (e.g. the “TruNarc”) and are rugged, field-deployable, are not required to touch the drug sample directly and provide fast results. However, the Raman fails to identify substances when present in low quantities or when a novel substance was not available in its spectral library [13]. Raman instruments are likely to be useful among a suite of analytic tools used in drug checking services, rather than as a stand-alone instrument.

This collection contains only 2 papers from outside of Australia – but it should be noted that Drug and Alcohol Review has also recently published Canadian papers on drug checking (just not in a festival context) [14, 15] as well as papers related to similar drug use practices but within the nightclub setting, e.g. in New York City [16-18].

This showcase of festival-related research provides some pertinent information relevant to advocates and policy makers. It demonstrates that the lack of drug checking in most parts of Australia cannot be blamed on a lack of evidence or on a lack of public support. Indeed, the lack of uptake of drug checking may be much more associated with a clash of values and the location of where the most political power currently lies, that is, within coalitions of partners aligned with law enforcement. As festivals begin to emerge again after the easing of pandemic restrictions on large gatherings, we may see further pushes for policy reform, especially in the event of deaths that could be prevented by service provision as well as public drug alerts derived from checking services.

Dr Monica Barratt
Senior Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellow, RMIT University, Melbourne Australia
and Deputy Editor for Drug and Alcohol Review

References

Barratt MJ, Bruno R, Ezard N, Ritter A. Pill testing or drug checking in Australia: Acceptability of service design features. Drug Alcohol Rev 2018;37:226-36.
Fernández Calderón F, Díaz Batanero C, Barratt MJ, Palamar JJ. Harm reduction strategies related to dosing and their relation to harms among festival attendees who use multiple drugs. Drug Alcohol Rev 2019;38:57-67.
Grigg J, Barratt MJ, Lenton S. Double dropping down under: Correlates of simultaneous consumption of two ecstasy pills in a sample of Australian outdoor music festival attendees. Drug Alcohol Rev 2018;37:851-5.
Murphy S, Bright SJ, Dear G. Could a drug-checking service increase intention to use ecstasy at a festival? Drug Alcohol Rev 2021;40:974-8.
Healey A, Siefried KJ, Harrod ME, Franklin E, Peacock A, Barratt MJ, et al. Correlates of higher-risk drug-related behaviours at music festivals in New South Wales, Australia. Drug Alcohol Rev 2021 [Epub ahead of print]. https://doi.org/10.1111/dar.13404
Hollett RC, Gately N. Risk intentions following pill test scenarios are predicted by MDMA use history and sensation seeking: A quantitative field study at an Australian music festival. Drug Alcohol Rev 2019;38:473-81.
Norman T, Peacock A, Ferguson SG, Kuntsche E, Bruno R. Combining transdermal and breath alcohol assessments, real-time drink logs and retrospective self-reports to measure alcohol consumption and intoxication across a multi-day music festival. Drug Alcohol Rev 2021;40:1112-21.
Olsen A, Wong G, McDonald D. ACT Pill Testing Trial 2019: Program Evaluation. Canberra, ACT: Australian National University; 2019.
Davis AK, Rosenberg H. Using the Theory of Planned Behavior to predict implementation of harm reduction strategies among MDMA/ecstasy users. Psychol Addict Behav 2016;30:500-8.
McAllister I, Makkai T. The effect of public opinion and politics on attitudes towards pill testing: Results from the 2019 Australian Election Study. Drug Alcohol Rev 2021;40:521-9.
Ritter A. Making drug policy in summer—drug checking in Australia as providing more heat than light. Drug Alcohol Rev 2019;39:12-20.
Sommerville K, Ritter A, Stephenson N. Pill testing policy: A comparative analysis using the Advocacy Coalition Framework. Drug Alcohol Rev 2021 [Epub ahead of print]. https://doi.org/10.1111/dar.13352
Gerace E, Seganti F, Luciano C, Lombardo T, Di Corcia D, Teifel H, et al. On-site identification of psychoactive drugs by portable Raman spectroscopy during drug-checking service in electronic music events. Drug Alcohol Rev 2019;38:50-6.
Borden SA, Saatchi A, Vandergrift GW, Palaty J, Lysyshyn M, Gill CG. A new quantitative drug checking technology for harm reduction: Pilot study in Vancouver, Canada using paper spray mass spectrometry. Drug Alcohol Rev 2021 [Epub ahead of print]. https://doi.org/10.1111/dar.13370
McCrae K, Tobias S, Grant C, Lysyshyn M, Laing R, Wood E, et al. Assessing the limit of detection of Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy and immunoassay strips for fentanyl in a real-world setting. Drug Alcohol Rev 2020;39:98-102.
Kelly BC, Vuolo M. Nightlife scene involvement and patterns of prescription drug misuse. Drug Alcohol Rev 2020;39:888-97.
Palamar JJ, Barratt MJ. Prevalence of reagent test-kit use and perceptions of purity among ecstasy users in an electronic dance music scene in New York City. Drug Alcohol Rev 2019;38:42-9.
Palamar JJ, Le A, Acosta P, Cleland CM. Consistency of self-reported drug use among electronic dance music party attendees. Drug Alcohol Rev 2019;38:798-806.

Help inform harm reduction in the EDM space

We need your help!

Harm reduction group Energy Control – famous for their international and local drug testing services – have collaborated with Australia’s DanceWize to do some research into safer drug use practices. We will see how drug use patterns and safer use practices differ between Spain and Australia, countries with quite different policy settings.

If you have been to festivals or dance parties recently, please complete the survey and help harm reduction groups understand what’s really happening!

http://partyanddrugs.infoinnova.es/

Global Cannabis Cultivation Survey

Here I am explaining why you should support our cannabis cultivation survey. Go to worldwideweed.nl for more information or follow @Wor1dWideWeed on Twitter.

Synthetic cannabinoids in Australia: an update

Stephen Bright and I recently posted an update to our popular post from November 2011 on The Conversation. It is reprinted in full below:

Synthetic cannabis is a lab-made product that mimics the effects of cannabis to give users a high when smoked. It has been sold in Australia since 2011 under various brand names, with a range of chemical compositions.

The product presents a unique challenge for drug policymakers. Despite 18 months of legislative action intended to ban synthetic cannabis, people in some states claim [mp3] they can still walk into a sex store or tobacconist and purchase it. Clearly the legislative changes have not been totally effective.

Who uses synthetic cannabis in Australia?

Last month, we published findings from the first survey of synthetic cannabis users in Australia.

When we asked people why they had first used synthetic cannabis, its legal status was an important reason. While 39% stated that they first tried the product because it was legal, 23% mentioned its availability was important, and 8% mentioned its non-detection in drug testing as a key factor.

We also found that almost all synthetic cannabis users who participated in our study had previously or were currently using cannabis.

Furthermore, evidence from this study and from the wider literature (for example, by Christopher Hoyte and Maren Hermanns-Clausen) indicates that synthetic cannabis products may be as risky as or more risky than cannabis itself. This is due to the lack of information about the ingredients in synthetic cannabis products and the pharmacological profiles of different synthetic cannabis varieties. We have virtually no information about longer term effects of these drugs.

The current state of regulation

A year ago, we published a summary of the legal status of synthetic cannabinoids in Australia. Since then, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) enacted new laws that prohibited eight broad classes of synthetic cannabinoids as well as any drugs that mimic cannabis.

These laws were intended to capture synthetic cannabinoids that were yet to be identified or even synthesised, in order to put an end to the cat and mouse game, where manufacturers introduce a new product immediately after legislators prohibit an old one.

Despite the TGA laws being ratified six months ago, there does not appear to have been any prosecutions of manufacturers based on these laws to date.

While importation falls under federal legislation, most drug laws are state-based. And while the relevant legislation in some states such as Victoria refers to the TGA’s legislation, the drug laws in other states such as New South Wales do not.

Our advice from law enforcement representatives in these states suggests that prosecution using the TGA’s legislation can only occur in federal jurisdictions (such as border control) and requires involvement by federal agents.

Nonetheless, even in Victoria – where some stores have reportedly had their synthetic cannabis confiscated since the TGA’s laws were ratified – it is unclear whether charges will be laid. Until charges are laid and these cases tried, the impact of the new laws remains unclear.

In another development, Queensland moved to independently implement new legislation redefining a “dangerous drug” as anything intended to “have a substantially similar pharmacological effect” to a banned substance.

But this legislation was not ratified, which meant that Queensland police eventually dropped charges against a number of retailers whose synthetic cannabis was confiscated.

Assessing the regulatory options

Given the ambiguity regarding synthetic cannabis, a NSW parliamentary committee is assessing the regulatory options for newer synthetic drugs. Last month, the committee heard evidence from government officials, industry representatives and researchers.

We outlined the following five possible regulatory options for the committee, while also recognising that the evidence to guide decision-making is limited.

The first is to continue banning individual substances as they become known. This option results in legislation and services playing catch up to an ever increasing array of new substances. A risk is that it may contribute to more harm by driving newer and lesser known products onto the market.

The second regulatory option is to ban broad categories of substances, including ones that activate the same brain systems as currently prohibited substances. But these broader laws have so far not been successfully prosecuted. They also assume that drugs of a similar category or that act on similar parts of the brain have similar harm profiles, when this may or may not be the case.

The third is to use currently available laws for the regulation of medicinal or consumer products, as some experts recently suggested. While this option may have merit, it offers only limited control.

The fourth option is to follow New Zealand’s lead and implement a specific regulatory regime for new psychoactive substances. Under the proposed system, distributors will be required to establish the safety of their products at their own expense before they may be legally sold. This new regulatory regime offers an alternative policy response to mitigate against the harmful cycle of new, untested drugs being sold as “legal highs”, but its success is yet to be established.

The fifth option is to design a new legislative framework that regulates all psychoactive substances. This option is consistent with recent calls for drug law reform. However, the Gillard government has indicated that it will not consider this option, and we still know very little about what the supply, use and harms of synthetic cannabis would look like if cannabis were legally available.

Even though there is no clear evidence to guide policy making in this area, we do know that the emergence of newer synthetic drugs is a complex challenge that requires consideration of all available policy options. We await the recommendations from the NSW Inquiry, due in 2013, which are likely to guide the direction of both state and commonwealth policy reform.

Podcast with Tim Bingham of INEF

Tim Bingham conducted a Skype interview with me last week about the world of drugs, internet, social media, Silk Road, ‘legal highs’, stigma and drug policy. It was a lot of fun! I’d like to thank Tim for providing me with the opportunity to participate.

You can access the podcast here.

Making academic knowledge media friendly

I attended a 2 day seminar last week run by the Centre for Research Excellence into Injecting Drug Use (CREIDU, or ‘cree-du’). The centre was launched mid-2011 and is based at the Burnet Institute, Melbourne. Day one focused on how to deal with the media. Day two focused on translating research into policy, and was run by the Drug Policy Modelling Program (DPMP). The program was an excellent mix of perspectives and practice. For my own benefit and for anyone else who is reading, I thought it would be useful to summarise what I learnt from the workshop.

Tracy Parish, Deputy Head of Public Affairs and Communications at Burnet, showed us this video (an advert for The Guardian) to illustrate how stories can spiral outwards in our contemporary media landscape:

We got a good sense of the journalist’s perseptive on science/academics. The journalist’s role is to ‘decipher complex issues’. They need to synthesise information into small digestible chunks and usually they need to do this to a hard deadline. Journalists need news that hooks the reader in. Why should the reader care about our academic findings? We need to have a solid answer to this question prior to engaging the media on our issue.

A great tool for seeing whether we can front the media effectively is the dinner party test – can you fascinate a group of non-specialists with a short story about what you do? Or do they back away as soon as you utter your first sentence? Why should your parents’ friends care about what you do? What connection would they make with your work?

I really enjoyed the presentation by Jon Faine, Radio presenter of the ABC morning show in Victoria. His presentation style was captivating which I think illustrated his main point, that you are performing when you engage with the media and you need to tell a good story. He also noted that ‘the media’ is often described as one monolithic entity, but that commercial and non-commercial media have completely different mandates and practices which we should be aware of when we choose who to engage with and how. Regardless of what kind of media we are talking about, Jon’s message of ‘head, heart, hip’ is important – if the story can’t be directly related to the head, heart or hip pocket of the audience, it’s not a compelling story.

For the rest of this post, I’m simply going to list the tips I wrote down from the entire day – which came from a number of diverse speakers and audience members.

When dealing with the media, academics should…

tell a good anecdote because this will engage the audience (allowing them to ‘paint a picture’ of the issue)
avoid statistics although simple numbers/proportions are compelling if they are limited in number and go to the core of the issue
don’t assume any prior knowledge – this can be difficult for academics who mainly socialise with other academics, but think about the dinner party test (I was thinking about times when I found myself talking to my parents’ neighbours about my phd!)
use the word ‘you’ and ‘your’, eg. in your workplace, in your family, in your community (why should the audience care about this story if it does not relate directly to them?)
if you are taking a purely ‘evidence-based’ approach and are asked your personal opinion, you can say that you have an opinion but that it doesn’t matter because your role is only to provide the evidence (further discussion occurred regarding advocacy positioning)
stick to your stance and if the journalist continues to push against you, suggest they go to another organisation and if you know of a suitable one, name them
never say just ‘yes’ or ‘no’, the journalist is looking for quotes so you need to speak in sentences
you can say no to a request from the media – it is good to remember that journalists need content to survive and that you are actually helping them to do their job, so you can be in charge of it – whether to do it in the first place, where to do it, when to do it, etc.

Specific advice for when you are preparing for or engaged in a phone interview with a journalist (eg. for newspaper):

Ask how long the interview will be? Remember you are likely only to be quoted for one sentence or two at the most so you need to prepare those messages.
Prepare a cheat sheet of 1-3 messages and any numbers/facts you need to get right
Research the journalist and publication if you don’t already know them well. What other pieces has this journalist written/produced? What standard of work are they associated with?
It was suggested that you should ensure the journalist understands that if they are not prepared to show you the article prior to publication, you are not prepared to allow them to use your name. I have personally found that journalists feel this request questions their integrity and their ability to do their job, and can get defensive, so I’m not sure whether this request is appropriate in practice. The best solution to this problem is probably around cultivating long-term relationships with journalists (see below).
Stand up! Wear heals/more formal clothing – find a place that is less familiar than your office to conduct the phone call. These actions help you to remember during the interview that this is not a casual conversation, this is a formal performance. It is easy to lapse into casual conversation which is when you are most likely to sway away from your defined role in this process.

Advice for managing your overall engagement with media:

Jon Faine described the OMDB (Over My Dead Body) list. If a journalist does the wrong thing by you, don’t deal with them again. Have a white list and a black list which you cultivate over time. Don’t reward bad behaviour.
Cultivate long-term relationships with journalists and media organisations. Doing this reduces your chances of being misquoted or misrepresented because the journalist will value their relationship with you and not want to jeopardise it if possible. It means you have a list of people to go to when you do have a story you think is newsworthy who you are not ‘cold-calling’.
During your academic research, be on the look out for good visual opportunities – video or image – and record them as you go. These can be used later for media engagements. If you provide visuals, you are more likely to reach a television audience – without visuals, you are limited to radio and newspapers.

Conferences

Some journalists read conference abstracts and may follow up with academics from this material. While this practice may not be commonplace, it is therefore good practice to ensure that conference abstracts are not only written for the academic community but also contain media friendly messages – assuming you want to attract media attention to your story (you don’t always want this!).
Approach the media liaison at a conference and introduce yourself to them.

Alternatives to media engagement

Write it yourself as an opinion piece – this way you can’t be misquoted or misrepresented

The final message? You need to first decide whether you want to be an academic that engages with the media. If you don’t want to, you need to communicate your findings to someone who will do it for you. If you do want to engage, you need to commit to learning how to do it well. This takes a regular time commitment and needs to be factored into your job timelines. It may mean that one less academic paper gets written per annum or it may mean the media-engaged researcher has to do more overtime. A major problem the workshop identified was that academics don’t get rewarded adequately for community engagement. Will the media-engaged researcher with slightly less academic publications win a fellowship over the media-disengaged researcher with slightly more academic publications? I hope that public impact count for something and I think it should definitely count for more than it does now.

Should academics engage with the media? Even if they will sometimes get it wrong (or oftentimes get it wrong depending on who you ask)? I say yes, we must. When it comes to evidence-based drug policy, we have an obligation to make our evidence appealing to the public. Public opinion matters more and more in terms of what policies governments are prepared to implement. If we can’t persuade governments, we may need to take on public opinion to have an impact on drug policy.

Discussing drugs in online forums: ACM Authorizer service

The ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) has a new service called Authorizer, which allows individual researchers to link to a fulltext version of their conference papers from their own website. This means you, the reader, don’t have to be affiliated with a university to access my paper. And the read/download statistics will update accordingly if you follow the link below to my paper.

Discussing illicit drugs in public internet forums: visibility, stigma, and pseudonymity

Monica J. Barratt
C&T ’11 Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Communities and Technologies, 2011

If only the drugs/health field were as open access oriented as the internet/computing field. Maybe one day!

Open access scholarly work in the addictions: Yes we can!

While I’m waiting for my phd to be examined, I’m (naturally) attempting to publish in reputable academic journals as this is the best way for me to continue my academic career by winning a fellowship. Without those publications, my fellowship chances are nil. Academic publishing, through peer review by my colleagues, is essential for me to get anywhere. The peer review system also improve the articles I write and acts as a filter so I can’t just publish any old ‘crap’, like I can to this blog 🙂 The skills of my peers in this field are really valuable. Of course I also want people to read my work and respond to it. However, now that we have the internet and I have this blog and twitter etc., the role of ‘reputable academic journals’ in this process is somewhat less important.

The main problem with this system in my opinion is that I want *everyone* to have access to resulting journal article. Why should my work be behind a paywall? Why should the readers be restricted to those with institutional connections in the academy?

To get an idea of the lunacy of academic publishing as it stands today, check out this animation:

What do publishers actually do? I don’t need my article printed. I can take care of the formatting. I provide the content. A group of colleagues can provide the peer review and I will and do peer review for my colleagues. The skills to run a website and an online system for reviewing and submitting are not difficult, although there is an element of time involved. Even then, most of the work is done by academics, not by the publishers. What exactly is my university paying the publisher for?

And if I want to publish in the small number of so-called Open Access journals in the drugs/alcohol/addiction field, myself or my university is asked to pay a publishing fee, which is in many cases over $1000. This is prohibitive. Governments and universities already pay once for the production of research through issuing grant moneys and salaries through fellowships and the like. Then they are asked to pay again to publish the article OR the reader is asked to pay.

To top off the lunacy of this system, I sign away the rights to my article when I publish in a traditional academic journal. So the publisher can make more money and restrict access to the content in order to do so. Yet, without any of us, the publisher would have nothing to sell and no profit to make.

So, can we create a truly open access journal for the drugs/alcohol/addictions research area? I say, yes we can!

And the NHMRC CEO thinks so too.

What do you think? Let’s keep talking and see what we can make happen!

Also see the Open Access Week and the Open Access Pledge.

kronicstudy.net

How do you think synthetic cannabis should be treated by the law?

You’re invited to participate in a study investigating the use of synthetic cannabis, otherwise known as Kronic, K2, Spice, Kaos, Northern Lights, Aussie Gold, Puff, Zeus, and many other brands…

You DO NOT need to be a past or current user of synthetic cannabis to be eligible for this study, and we are especially interested in hearing from people with no prior use of these drugs. However, you DO need to be at least 18 years of age and an Australian resident in
order to be eligible.

Participation in this study involves completing an online survey lasting 20 minutes. It is entirely voluntary, completely anonymous and no identifying information will be collected.

Visit the following URL to participate:
http://kronicstudy.net

For further information, contact me!
(email m.barratt@curtin.edu.au, twitter @monicabarratt, phone +61 407 778 938)