Methamphetamine Discourse: Media, Law, and Policy

Abstract

This article examines the emergence of methamphetamine use and production as a social problem in Canada, particularly through media discourse. Rather than confine our discussion to print media, we also examine news photographs and headlines as cultural products. In addition, we briefly discuss several drug scares and media campaigns in Canada in the nineteenth century to contextualize the “crystal meth scare.” We discuss the tendency of contemporary newspaper articles, photographs and Internet sites about methamphetamine to reiterate conventional ideas about drugs and the people who use and produce them. Our analysis of print media and photos about methamphetamine centres on a special 2005 supplement to Vancouver newspaper The Province. Drawing from critical researchers whose analyses of media argue that news is a cultural product and that “law and order” is an important news category, we conclude with an examination of Canadian federal, provincial, and local responses to the crystal meth threat, which most often support law-and-order initiatives.