NY gay activists say anti-meth posters stigmatize small, recreational gay meth users

[astro]

Gays: Anti-meth posters unfair

Is this for real? I thought meth was considered “Really Bad Stuff”. Is it now considered just a new recreational drug in the same class as marijuana?

A public awareness campaign featuring posters of convicted methamphetamine dealers has drawn an angry response from gay activists.
Last week, federal prosecutors in Manhattan unveiled the posters, which have the defendants’ names, mug shots and warnings like, “Over seven years for selling crystal meth. Was it worth it?”

They planned to plaster them in heavily gay neighborhoods that have been ravaged by the highly addictive stimulant.

Activists responded yesterday by accusing authorities of needlessly vilifying gay men who were caught selling small amounts of crystal meth

Kelley announced the campaign following the sentencing of a Manhattan artist, William Cullum, 46, to more than seven years in prison. Cullum was arrested last year after selling an ounce of crystal meth to an undercover agent for $2,800.

Activists say most crystal meth dealers in heavily gay neighborhoods such as Chelsea and the West Village are nonviolent addicts who sell to support their habits.

Rather than deter dealing, the posters would “heighten homophobia both within our community and outside it,” said psychologist Bruce Kellerhouse. “Gay men need to be informed about drug laws and sentencing, but they don’t need another reason to beat themselves up.”

[CrazyCatLady]

So, the stigmatizing gay recreational users would be different from stigmatizing straight recreational users? What a load of horseshit.

[Cluricaun]

Selling an ounce of meth hardly seems like harmless fun to me. Gay or not Gay, or whatever, that’s not the point. Meth is probably the worst drug of them all. It’s cheap, it’s massively physically destructive, and it’s frighteningly addictive. There is no way to realistically have a “harmless” meth habit.

[SolGrundy]

Meth is bad shit, it’s highly addictive, and these protests are just pathetic. It’s just an attempt to turn it into a gay vs. straight issue so they can play the “homophobia!” card, which is bullshit when there’s plenty of real homophobia still going on. The worst part is that it just plays into the notion that so many opponents of gay rights have, that there’s some Gay Agenda advocating the policy that “anything and everything goes and it’s all fine!”

“Gay men… don’t need another reason to beat themselves up.” What a load of crap – if you’re a gay man, or a straight man, who’s hooked on crystal meth, you need to beat yourself up and get off that shit. You don’t need somebody holding your hand saying, “it’s okay, because you’re gay and you can’t help it.” Some people just need to grow the hell up and realize their actions have consequence.

[Miller]

I kinda see their point, although they’re arguing it extremely poorly. By having a greater concentration of these posters in gay neighborhoods than the rest of the city, it gives the impression that the gay neighborhoods (and, by extension, the gays who live in them) are especially dangerous and unsavory. Crystal meth is nasty stuff, and I don’t want to minimize it in anyway, but gays are fighting an almost constant image war against mainstream preconceptions, and judging by yesterday’s elections, we aren’t doing so well. To a certain extent, I don’t blame these activists for placing the image problem (which affects all gays) over the drug abuse problem (which only effects those gays who are dumb enough to do crystal meth.) Considering how consistently and completely the War on Drugs has failed since its unfortunate inception, I have to question if these posters are going to do any real difference in drug abuse rates, and if that difference is big enough to off set the PR problem.

[Silver_Fire]

@Miller

I kinda see their point, although they’re arguing it extremely poorly. By having a greater concentration of these posters in gay neighborhoods than the rest of the city, it gives the impression that the gay neighborhoods (and, by extension, the gays who live in them) are especially dangerous and unsavory.

Well, if that’s where the meth problem is, it makes sense that’s where they’d put the signs. Doesn’t it?

Meth = bad, regardless of your gender or the gender of the people you’d prefer to bang. Period. It’s not a “recreational” drug, and it never will be. These folks are getting all uppity just so they can feel offended by something while justifying their drug addiction, and I don’t agree with them.

In short, I agree with everyone else in this thread.

[Miller]

@Silver Fire

Well, if that’s where the meth problem is, it makes sense that’s where they’d put the signs. Doesn’t it?

Does it make sense to put the posters up anywhere at all? Is there any evidence that this sort of anti-drug campaign does any good? Is this the most effective way to get this information out to the public? If not, aren’t there better ways to spend that money? Surely there’s a clinic somewhere that could desperately use the two or three hundred bucks they spent at Kinko’s to print these things up.

Like I said, I don’t think these people are making very good arguments, but they do have a valid point. Hell, if my neighborhood was going to be plastered with posters of glaring criminal mugshots and dire drug warnings, I’d be kinda pissed, too. It’s an important problem and all, but do I really need to be confronted with it every single time I leave my house?

[DougC]

• • • Isn’t this the exact same thing that rabid-gay-rights groups said about AIDS when it was first discovered spreading through the US-Canadian gay community?
      …
      “Gay men telling other gay men that unprotected sex is dangerous is one thing,” said Peter Staley of the Crystal Meth Working Group. “It is quite another thing for government, especially public health agencies, to threaten gay men with what looks like a deadly disease.”
      ~