editorial comment Fear works! Ask Dick Cheney...

I’VE JUST RECEIVED a promotional pack of plastic bottle plugs through the post. The brand name for this new product is Spikey™ and they are designed to stop drinks being drugged. Place one in the neck of a bottle, insert a straw, and its clever valve device will make it nigh impossible for any unwelcome narcotics to be slipped into your drink.

The Spikey™ was invented by Ray Lockett, after his daughter Marilyn’s drink was spiked on her 21st birthday. Fortunately, her friends got her safely home. Drink spiking is said to be an escalating problem. To carry out assaults or even rape, assailants are said to add narcotics such as Rohypnol, ketamine (a form of anaesthetic) and GHB (gamma hydroxy butyrate), into the drinks of their intended victims, rendering them out of control and incapable of struggle.

Victims explain that they suddenly and unexpectedly find themselves vulnerable to attack. They feel and look very drunk without drinking much. The Roofie Foundation, an agency that deals with drug rape and sexual assault, claim that 998 people reported sexual abuse or rape after spiking in 2003.

Over the last decade awareness of spiking has certainly increased. Campaigns are launched through the year to coincide with late summer evenings out, student freshers’ weeks and Christmas festivities. The warning material is enough to put anyone off their drink.

Buy a beverage in a bar today and an alert comes with your pint. On the wall of my local is a garish poster advising punters: "Never accept a drink from someone you don’t know," with evil eyes behind the alert. "Who’s watching your drink?" asks another.

Aberdeen University issued cautionary cocktail sticks, to put into friends’ long and short shots, to show just how easy it is to slip a dangerous drug into a drink. Checklists in women’s magazine instruct readers: "Never leave drinks unattended or turn your back on your table." "Do not," they advise, "drink from open beverage sources like punch bowls, pitchers or tubs." There goes the sangria or eggnog at parties.

The warnings are horrifying, but just how worried should we be? There is a lot of fiction but rather less fact about drink drugging. We should not swallow these alerts without examining them further.

The straws come with research, conducted by R&G Products, the company which produces them. It makes the terrifying claim that: "One in three women who regularly went to bars and clubs ‘had their drinks spiked or know of someone who had been spiked’". It states that 90 per cent of the 373 interviewed are aware of spiking and are "worried about it".

At first glance this is worrying, but actually, it tells us little. There is no proof here that any of these women have been spiked. The one in three figure is merely anecdotal. There is a slippery elision between having been spiked and knowing of someone who has been. But we all know a friend of a friend who has experienced something terrible. This survey measures the level of urban myth around the issue. It shows women are worried, but it does not prove that they need to be. And to be frank, when we get drunk and do stupid things, we often want to blame something besides our own idiocy.

The "research" accompanying this product is being used as propaganda to promote it. But R&G are not the only ones pushing fear. A lot of the other campaigns use tenuous facts and figures to fuel awareness. A real assessment of spiking is hard to obtain. This is partly due to the nature of the drugs: they are tasteless, sometimes colourless and odourless. They leave little trace in the body after a few days. Even so, figures on this crime are so low that we should not be too scared to drink and be out and about.

The Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland hold no figures on drug-assisted rape or sexual assault, nor does the Scottish Executive, although it plans to do so in the future. There is a record of only one prosecution for rape involving GHB in Scotland, and this same case did not suggest that it was done through spiking.

The Metropolitan Police in London admits that, of the 6,809 allegations of rape and sexual assault it received in 2003, just 242 were claims of drug-induced assault. Bear in mind that these are allegations, not convictions, and that drug-induced assault does not mean it was hidden in a drink, merely that someone was on drugs when the assault took place.

IT’S HARD TO FIND just one clear example of spiking. In fact, a survey by the Institute of Biomedical Science found that "despite a large number of requests for flunitrazepam [Rohypnol] analyses, very few positives have been found." The institute concluded: "It is felt that its use in ‘date rape’ is vastly overestimated."

Jenny Duncan, women’s officer of the National Union of Students in Scotland, said that her experience of spiking was mostly anecdotal evidence, "but I did read of a case in the newspaper last year of a girl near Aberdeen". Nevertheless, she feels that campaigns promoting the dangers are a good thing.

This isn’t to say that drug-assisted assault does not happen. Unfortunately it does. But cases are hard to find. Statistically, I feel you have more chance of poking yourself in the eye with the straw required to use the Spikey™ than preventing a spiking. And there are serious consequences, such as the promotion of panic via these products. These campaigns tell people - women in particular - to be afraid. It encourages us all to be on the look-out at all times and to feel scared, instead of to eat, drink and be merry. We are told to check our drinks and worry. Duncan does not think this is scaremongering. "There is no danger of scaring people," she says. "We need to raise awareness with the facts of the campaign and we need to inform people."

But we are not arming them with the facts. They are being pushed into panic - whether it’s through plastic straws for bottles, or posters in bars, anxiety is advertised. Spiking with intent to assault is something that happens too rarely to organise our social lives around. We should detox ourselves of these scares.

• Tiffany Jenkins is director, arts and society, at the Institute of Ideas

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