NEW ART SHOW 'GLAMORISES' DRUG CULTURE

A controversial photographic exhibition and auction, featuring iconic
images associated with illegal drug-taking, opens next month amid
accusations that it glamorises addiction.

Included is a much-published shot of Marianne Faithfull and Mick
Jagger leaving court after his conviction for marijuana possession in
1967, a case that prompted The Times to question the severity of the
sentence in an editorial headlined "Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?"

The Thin Lines, White Lies exhibition opens online on 6 November and
will be seen on 11 November by influential guests and celebrities at a
viewing in Soho, central London, at which DrugScope, the organisers,
will invite a private audience to outdo online bids for iconic images.
These will include a pictures of former cocaine-user Daniella
Westbrook, showing her missing septum, and of John Lennon and Yoko Ono
after receiving a drug conviction.

DrugScope, the leading drugs education charity, said the aim was to
show pictures of rock stars and other celebrities alongside
hard-hitting images of ordinary people, including a pregnant woman
shooting up and dealers selling drugs from a pram, in an attempt to
"provoke debate".

Martin Barnes, its chief executive, defended the exhibition and sale
which he said challenged the "celebrity glitter" view of drugs. He
also said it was more effective to educate people about the risks of
drug use than to send alarmist messages that young people know are not
true. "We are not about wagging a finger and saying 'don't take
drugs', but saying, if you take them these are the risks involved."

Critics, however, say some of the images to invite online bids could
reinforce the stereotype that drugs equal glamour while also appearing
to support legalisation. The National Drug Prevention Alliance said
most people occupied a "middle ground" on drug prevention, but Peter
Stoker, a spokesman, said: " I think that people should view this
exhibition with scepticism if not cynicism. Images can rebound - the
Home Office was inundated with requests for copies of the young man
shooting up for the 'Heroin Screws You Up' campaign. It's glamorous to
see John and Yoko outside a court."

DrugScope, which helped to draft government guidance for drug
education in schools, is among organisations that have backed calls to
reclassify ecstasy from class A to class B.

Earlier this year, David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, reclassified
cannabis to a class C drug, a move that had earlier prompted Keith
Hellawell, the drugs tsar, to resign.

Mr Hellawell said yesterday that ministers had "turned their backs" on
the issue of drug abuse. He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme:
"What we are seeing is that drugs have gone off the radar of the
Labour government. They came in in '97 with this as part of their
manifesto," he said. "Now you never hear anything about it.

"It is as if they are turning their back on it, closing their eyes to
it, believing that perhaps it will go away, but it doesn't."