Drawing a Line | Mike Linnell | 20 Years of Harm Reduction
Russell Newcombe
Mike on Russell
Russell is a researcher, writer and academic. He was the author of 'High Time for Harm Reduction' (published in Druglink), which helped focus sporadic harm reduction practices across the country into an informal movement. His work on drafting the first ever code of practices for nightclubs produced for Manchester City Council and Lifeline kicked the whole safer dancing thing off. I was with Russell when he was thrown out of the Vatican for refusing to take off his baseball cap.
In 1987 I got hired by Mersey Health Authority to set up the Drug
Education Research Project in Liverpool, the first task of which was to
design and research some harm-reduction cartoons. A character called
'Willy Whizz' was invented (or rather ripped off) to give information
about safer use of amphetamine while 'speeding' around his cartoon
strip. I needed an artist to produce the final version, and was lucky
enough to meet Mike Linnell who had recently started working for
Lifeline, and he agreed to bring 'Willy Whizz' to life. But WW was just a
prototype, and quickly became history as Lifeline launched the brilliant Smack in the Eye, closely followed by the notorious poly-drug antics of
Mike's most lovable characters, Peanut Pete and his pals.
Unlike similar stuff from other agencies, Mike's publications are properly informed by interviews with drug users and scientific research, and the cartoon medium is not just another convenient vehicle for varying the delivery of drug information. Why they work so well is that they are first and foremost classy, original funny cartoon stories in their own right. Mike's cartoons and comics are as good as if not better than any of their counterparts in the commercial market, and manage the difficult task of imparting useful information about safer drug use without coming across like a poorly disguised health education message from straight 'do-gooders'. Positive and negative effects are equally addressed (another rarity), and the message and mood is always intelligently and impressively geared toward the worldview of the target audience. Sometimes slapstick and sometimes surreal, the humour laughs with drugs users, and not at them. In fact, the tone of a Linnellian cartoon couldn't be further from the serious tone found in most other drug information products, which is why they get passed round and read by lots of people rather than quickly skimmed and dumped like most drug leaflets/booklets.
In short, in addition to spending two decades providing drug users
with masses of useful information in an attractive form, Mike has
also made a major contribution to comicbook art by evolving his own
distinctive style and 'stable' of cartoon characters, whose images and
words are loaded with his unique interpretation of druggie humour,
culture and wisdom. But best of all Mike's cartoon world always buzzes
with the true spirit of harm reduction, the user-friendly attitude of old,
now lost to so many of the professionalised and bureaucracy-laden drug
agencies of Blairite Britain.