This blog managed to get into the Melbourne mX today in the story ‘Kronic case of publicity’ on p. 5. The irony is that the story is actually an example itself of what Stephen Bright and I were talking about in our earlier post: mentions of Kronic by mainstream media fuels public interest in Kronic as shown by Google Trends data, where spikes in searches for related terms match with the pattern of major news articles on the topic.
To any new readers who may have come here via mX, welcome. Feel free to take a look around 🙂
And another example of the media influencing people’s awareness of Kronic, which then leads to use of Kronic:
http://m.cqnews.com.au/story/2011/11/18/kronic-made-me-bloody-useless/#.TsYbGisfnM4.mailto
This is great work guys – from memory, I think this phenomenon can be traced back to Detroit (USA) in the middle of last century when glue-sniffing rapidly spread around the country following a front-page newspaper article spurred by cops stumbling across some dizzy youths. Of course, we then saw the published maps from Victoria’s (AUS) Herald-Sun so that people could also find their way to the place of purchase, in addition to being alerted about the prevalence of strong heroin in inner-city Melbourne during the late-nineties.
Such an awesome thing for this blog to have found its way into a widely read media source such as mX. Also heartening to read Stephen Bright’s comments about the use of drugs like MDMA in psychiatric treatment in the Age this week.
Thanks for the comment! Yeah it is cool being put in mX though I have not noticed any major increase in traffic. I doubt people follow links in the mX when you think about the context people read it.
Thanks for historical view on this media – banned substances connection. In the end people want to know about these issues – whether because they are curious to try it themselves or because they want to ensure they (and their children) avoid it. Newspapers sell stories people want to know about. In some ways we are shooting the messenger. In the end if people want to alter their consciousness and their minds, they will find a way…
Very proud of Steve’s article on MDMA/PTSD. Fantastic to see that sort of thing in mainstream press!