Where the GT survey finds that 56% reported using them, Stonewall found just 31%. Let’s take poppers (amyl nitrite if we’re being formal) as an example. Both sets of figures suggest GT has considerably overestimated drug use. Similar data can be found not only in a 2012 survey carried out by Stonewall (which had a much larger sample of nearly 7,000), but also in recently published figures from the authoritative Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW).
This may sound quite minor, but we can start to see how this may have a large effect on the results when we compare it to previous research efforts. This can have a big effect on who answers the survey, both in terms of who hears about it, and who feels that it’s relevant to them and so worth taking the time to respond to.īy way of illustration, a 20-something party animal living in London who uses Twitter, frequents the Vauxhall scene and is comfortable using recreational drugs is both more likely to hear about and more likely to answer the survey than a middle-aged gay man living in the countryside with a dodgy internet connection. It was hosted online, advertised to Gay Times readers online, and pitched specifically as a ‘drugs survey’. The survey has a fundamental problem, which is that, unlike most professionally-conducted surveys and research, its participants were self-selecting.
The reality might, thankfully, be less exciting The survey’s conclusion is clear: gay and bisexual men are incorrigible, unrepentant alcoholic, drug-snorting sex dreadnoughts, who wouldn’t be seen dead getting it on without a line of something typically found in a rock star’s dressing room. Mephedrone and meth are currently at the centre of concerns among public health practitioners about gay men’s use of drugs in a sexual context.
More concerningly, it found that one in nine respondents said they had used mephedrone, ketamine or crystal meth. According to the survey, 56% had used poppers/amyl nitrites, 48% had used cannabis, 41% had used cocaine and 40% had used MDMA/ecstasy. One of the questions asked respondents what drugs they used before sex, and the results suggest that gay and bisexual men are much more likely to consume drugs than the general population. The bone-shattering dog-bites-man banality of the top line – people have sex when drunk – notwithstanding, the story includes some alarming figures about gay men’s consumption of drugs and alcohol, and their link to unsafe sexual behaviour.