Reporting Guidelines
General Press Release No. 100 (December 1988)

Drugs - too much information

The Australian Press Council recently received a complaint concerning advice contained in a by-lined article in a major metropolitan newspaper that 10,000 Serapax tablets would be required for a lethal overdose. The statement had first appeared in an advertisement in medical journals, which was based on an extrapolation of animal tests, but was according to the complainant, a medical practitioner, scientifically invalid. As a result of his protests the relevant manufacturers association held the advertisement to be in breach of its Code of Conduct and it was withdrawn. The complainant is aggrieved that when he wrote to the newspaper concerned pointing out these matters, the newspaper merely published two paragraphs thereof as a letter to the editor without comment.

The Council's normal practice is to require that complaints be received within three months of publication. Several months have elapsed since the article was published and in the interim there has been a substantial turnover of personnel at the newspaper. The Council believes, however, that the matter is of sufficient importance to warrant the reiteration of its earlier warnings to newspapers and journalists about the presentation of stories or articles on drugs.

Drug addiction is so horrifying a feature of modern life that most careful consideration should be given to the likelihood of counter-productive effects from articles about, and the provision of, indiscriminate information about drugs, particularly where they are named, even though not naming them may lessen the impact of an article.

The Council once again urges all engaged in journalism to accept even rigid self-restraints rather that risk contribution to the spread of the disaster of drug-taking habits.
 

Other guidelines on reporting of drugs are GPR 20, GPR 36, GPR 121.

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