At school the message was simple, and to be accepted without question; if we took drugs our brains would swell and we would most likely die.
That's been the predominant style of anti-drugs education for as long as I can remember. Drugs are bad for me, it's not in my interest to take them, because then my life will be worse...
I'm sure we can all recall sermons along a similar vein; if you do x then y will happen and you will not go to heaven / fall outisde God's will / drift away from God. It is, unfortunately, a little harder to recall sermons which look not to personal consequences, but to the social conscience.
So the fact that the National Crime Agency (NCA) – the UK's equivalent to the FBI – has released a campaign not entirely focused on the wellbeing of the consumer is very refreshing. Instead, the #EveryLineCounts campaign appeals to our social conscience, alerting cocaine users to the reality of the drug trade which they are supporting. It talks about the "devastating consequences for children, communities and the environment in cocaine producing countries".
The campaign portrays just how much death, environmental damage and fear goes into the manufacturing of cocaine, before pointing out that "none of this has any point" without the casual drug user buying the end product.
Reaction to the video is polarised. People either love it, or are very, very cross, accusing the NCA of shifting the blame. The "war on drugs" should involve targeting and reforming the system, they say, rather than putting responsibility and guilt on the consumer.
These critics would be right, except that this campaign is running alongside the NCA's continued targeting of organised criminal networks that transport cocaine, and last year 70 tonnes of the stuff were seized as a result of NCA activity.
So will the campaign work? Many recreational drug users pride themselves on social engagement. They will fight exploitation of workers in sweatshops and against environmental abuses, but seemingly turn a blind eye to the cost of the line they did last weekend.
Tony Saggers, head of drugs threat at the NCA, is generous in his analysis, suggesting that recreational users "often have no idea of the damage funded by their occasional line."
"We think many of them would be shocked by the reality," he said. "When they use cocaine, aside from putting their own lives at risk, they are feeding an industry which routinely uses death, violence and destruction in its production process.
"Buying cocaine funds the exploitation of impoverished people, destroys and pollutes large areas of rainforest, forces people from their homes so coca can be grown on their land, and results in the murder of police officers and others who stand in the way of powerful crime groups. Those harms are usually out of sight of the end user, and we don't think they should be."
There is a danger this message could become one that blames the consumer and ignores the inherent problems in the system and the possibility for action closer to the source. But the fact remains that we have a responsibility for our actions.
Some choose to boycott Nestlé over its promotion of instant formula instead of breastfeeding,which led to infant fatalities. But while they would advise others not to purchase products from the brand, they do not attribute the same blame on the consumer as they would to Nestlé.
Similarly, the casual drug user does not carry the full weight of guilt that a dealer, or one more heavily involved in the drug trade, would. Yet, he does remain responsible for his own actions and can choose.
As Saggers said, the campaign is "asking people to weigh up the facts and ask themselves whether they can square their use of this drug with the damage it does to others."
This shift from the individual to the corporate is key and a point from which the church can learn.
Church tends towards a focus on personal morality, often turning a blind eye to larger scale justice issues. You are more likely to be told on Sunday that taking drugs is a sin because it will lead to "debauchery" (Ephesians 5:18) rather than because we are commanded "to do justice" (Micah).
Yes, individual morality and sin is important to God, but the reality is that we have failed to balance its importance with the signficance of corporate sin. How we behave personally is not all that matters; God is interested in corporate sin, and so should we be. If we focus just on the personal impact of what doing a line of cocaine – or anything else that might be compromising – would have on our own life, we ultimately remain self-centred.
Christian faith demands the believer look beyond the personal consequences an action might have. Jesus was engaged with social justice issues and we are called to be as well. Isaiah 58 urges us to "loose the chains of injustice" and "set the oppressed free."
Yes there are personal consequences of sin, but if we shift the focus away from the individual to the corporate impact of that sin we see a justice issue on a far greater scale.
