This article explores the role of daily print media in the formation of policies on illicit drug use. It asks how we might think about the rote of the media in making drug policy and how the print media represent the use of heroin. In answering these questions through an examination of the complex process of problem making, the article suggests it may help us to better understand how issues which policy-makers identify as ‘problems’ come to achieve such a status, and how solutions that come to be regarded as ‘realistic’ — or not — reach this point.
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