“Add a powerful new street drug called DOC to the list of dangerous cocktails that suburban young people in Oakland County are experimenting with.” begins an article in the Oakland Press by journalist Natalie Lombardo. The most troubling part of this article is, it seems as if the author didn’t even bother to do almost any research on her own and instead interview the police, misrepresent the facts and conflate the story about DOC with a story about a dangerous drug cocktail, heroin laced with an extremely potent opioid fentanyl that is prescribed to elderly and cancer patients, among others.
DOC is not a mix of drugs like Fentanyl-laced Heroin that used to be endemic to Detroit and other areas. It is not a mix of drugs, it is just one chemical 2,5-dimethoxy-4-chloroamphetamine. Neither is it a “street drug”, the drug is manufactured by Chinese labs and sold over the internet. The street market does not have nearly any demand for these drugs considering no lay person has ever heard of them or knows what they are. People would rather stick to tried and true illegal psychedelic drugs such as mushrooms or lysergic acid-diethylamide (LSD). Would you take a drug you didn’t know anything about from a drug dealer?
“When you buy something off the street, you don’t know what you’re trying. You might as well be putting a gun to your head and playing Russian roulette.” said Undersheriff Michael McCabe in the Oakland Press article.
Why do these drugs sell then if they seem to have nothing good going for them? The article even states that the drug induces a 24-hour “high”, who would even want to be up that long? Actually, the “high” lasts 12-24 hours according to the book PiHKAL by Alexander & Ann Shulgin. A few of the reasons the drug are that it is incredibly cheap and in a grey-area legally. DOC is a drug analogue of DOB which is a Schedule I drug, DOC and DOB are chemically similar. This would mean DOC is illegal under the Federal Analog Act if intended for human consumption. Some sellers state “This product is not intended for human consumption” to get around this but it’s not like China is overly concerned about operating within the realms of United States law.
This article should have been titled “Irresponsible idiot orders drugs off the internet and overdoses his friends, friends hospitalized”. Would you be more likely to read that article or one with the headline “Police warn of risks from drug cocktails”?
Unfortunately when newspapers care about profits more than providing good journalism, the quality of articles goes down yet the readership goes up. Are advertisers and big corporations controlling the way we think, maybe even deciding for us before we’ve made up our minds? A very interesting theory that might allude to this is called the propaganda model created by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. As more and more corporations such as Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation snatch up unprofitable newspapers, it would be prudent to read about how advertising affects media bias.
Sources:
Natalie Lombardo, “Police warn of risks from drug cocktails.” The Oakland Press
Alexander and Ann Shulgin, “”PIHKAL” – #64 DOC”” Erowid Online Books
