Drawing a Line | Mike Linnell | 20 Years of Harm Reduction
Mark Gilman
Mike on Mark
Mark and I both started work for Lifeline in the same month and year. Amongst other things we were both responsible for producing Lifeline's first publication 'Smack in the Eye'. As a thinker, writer and public speaker Mark Gilman played an important part in the early harm reduction movement; he was certainly the funniest of the early harm reducers. Mark's research and analysis of the early rave scene was of vital importance to the Safer Dancing campaign and the Peanut Pete range of leaflets. Mark is now a Regional Manager for the NTA.
When I joined Lifeline Mike Linnell was already there. When I moved
to Lifeline's Regional Drug Training Unit I started to work closely with
Mike. At first I thought what does a Spurs fan from Basildon know
about drugs and drug users in the North West? Within a few months I
had the answer - a lot!
I suppose I have to talk about the first edition
of 'Smack in the Eye'. We wanted to produce something that would
let British injecting drug users know that they too were at risk of HIV
and AIDS. They didn't believe they were. I had extensive ethnographic
contact with injecting drug users in Greater Manchester. I started
warning people about the threat of HTLV3 (as HIV was then known).
My warnings met with characteristic resistance - "Bollocks - it's only
queers and American Junkies who get that shit!" As I recall, we (Mike
Linnell, Rowdy Yates and me) sat down in the Church Inn in Prestwich
and talked through a range of ideas to break through this resistance.
The comic was Mike's idea. The first edition was brilliant. Since that first
edition of 'Smack in the Eye', Mike has gone on to produce hundreds of
cutting edge harm reduction cartoons. I can't think of one that hasn't
hit the right spot.
There are many in the drugs sector who like to think
of themselves as genuine radicals. In over twenty years I have only met one genuine radical in this business. Mike Linnell is the only person I
know who has never compromised. He has never given an inch. He is as
committed today as he was twenty years ago. As for a favorite? It's got
to be "The Lads Go Mad in Amsterdam".