‘I uploaded a photo of a bag of coke to Facebook’ reads a WhatsApp message we got the other day. Somehow, when we’re nailed, filming it can seem like the best idea of remembering it. But not for the mates of Liverpool and England footballer Raheem Sterling, who’s now at the centre of a controversy after footage of him allegedly doing laughing gas got leaked to the papers.
The Sun’s headline reads ‘BALLOONY’ and the sell reads ‘EXCLUSIVE: LIVERPOOL ACE STERLING ON HIPPY CRACK DAYS BEFORE GAME’
But, um, what do you have to be on to think that ‘hippy crack’ is actually something people do? Quite rightly, the BBC say the alleged gas in the balloon is ‘laughing gas’ and other people are going for the perhaps more scientific ‘nitrous oxide.’
Snapchat and gutters are full of people ‘doing balloons’ so it’s not that we doubt nitrous oxide’s popularity. It is, in fact, the second most popular drug of choice for young British people after cannabis. What we do doubt, however, is that anyone who’s ever done it actually calls it ‘hippy crack’. The sorts who do call it ‘hippy crack’ are likely to have only ever encountered a soda stream when making after dinner party cocktails at a 1960s-style drinks cabinet.
Laughing gas is dangerous, but it’s nowhere as addictive as crack, and while giving drugs these misleading names might intend to make users look like idiots for doing them, it also makes the people making up the names look mind-blowingly out of touch. Plus, hippies do all sorts of drugs! Take a look at what’s filling the clammy plastic baggies of anyone at a festival purely ‘for the vibes’, if you don’t believe us.
We’re all for the authorities getting to grips with drugs – as a concept, not just boshing pills back on their way into work so they can spend the day pawing at the carpet and telling it how pleasing it is – so they can reform what’s clearly a broken system when addiction just can’t be solved.
But as long as they insist on calling them silly, attention-grabbing names like ‘meow meow’ and ‘hippy crack’ to make the users look like freaks, they’ve got no hope of any sort of progress.
Like this? You might also be interested in:
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.