Date Rape Drug - Media Coverage and Moral Panic Aspects

Media Coverage and Moral Panic Aspects

There were three media stories about Rohypnol in 1993, 25 in 1994 and 854 in 1996. In early 1996 Newsweek magazine published "Roofies: The date-rape drug" which ended with the line "Don't take your eyes off your drink." That summer, researchers say all major American urban and regional newspapers covered date rape drugs, with headlines such as "Crackdown sought on date rape drug" (Los Angeles Times), "Drug zaps memory of rape victims" (San Francisco Chronicle) and "Slow DEA Action Gives Women No Relief from the Threat of New Date-Rape Drug" (Detroit News). Date rape drugs were also covered in media aimed at young women such as Seventeen and Sassy magazines. In 1997 and 1998, the date rape drug story received extensive coverage on CNN, ABC's 20/20 and Primetime Live, the Oprah Winfrey Show, and the fictitious TV shows Beverly Hills 90210 and South Park. Women were instructed to never drink from punch bowls, never leave a drink unattended, try no new drinks, drink nothing with an unusual taste or appearance, take their own drinks to parties, drink nothing opened by another person, and, in effect, regard themselves as living in a state of sexual siege from predatory males. News media have been criticized for overstating the DFSA threat, for providing "how to" material for potential date rapists, and for advocating "grossly excessive protective measures for women, particularly in coverage between 1996 and 1998, and law enforcement representatives and feminists have been criticized for supporting the overstatements for their own purposes.

The coverage has been described as creating or amplifying a moral panic rooted in societal anxieties about rape, hedonism and the increased freedoms of women in modern culture. Researchers say it has given a powerful added incentive for the suppression of party drugs, has undermined the long-established argument that recreational drug use is purely a consensual and victimless crime, has threatened to seriously curtail women's sexual and social freedoms, and by shining a spotlight on premeditated clearly predatory behaviour, has relieved the culture from having to explore and evaluate more nuanced forms of male sexual aggression towards women, such as that displayed in date rape that was not facilitated by the surreptitious administration of drugs. For similar moral panics around social tensions manifesting via discussion of drugs and sex crime, researchers point to the opium scare of the late 19th century, in which "sinister Chinese" were said to use opium to coerce white women into sexual slavery. Similarly, in the Progressive Era, a persistent urban legend told of white middle-class women being surreptitiously drugged, abducted and sold into sexual slavery to Latin American brothels.