Slang terms are also culturally specific. Pinger was not on the list but ping-on was listed as meaning opium and pingus as the prescription drug Rohypnol (a sedative and muscle relaxant). In 2009 police in England and Wales were issued with a list of 3,000 words to learn so they could ‘ stay ahead of criminals‘. It took a few years for pinger to be used in the UK as slang for MDMA. Buyer bewareĪ problem with relying on slang to identify drugs is meanings change over time. ‘Shelving a pinger’ refers to inserting a drug in the anus. Slang can also describe ways drugs are used. By 2012,, a UK website that regularly reports on popular and emerging drug use, was using the term pinger to describe MDMA. And the term’s use has spread out of Australia. None of these examples refer to MDMA specifically, but there’s an assumption people know what the word pinger means, including the drug’s use and effects. “I had so many pingers last night I was tripping balls”.Īn Australian video game called Big City Earnez has players collecting ‘pingaz’ – things that look like tablets – in different Melbourne suburbs and hiding from the police. More recently the word pinger has appeared in several pop culture dictionaries with examples related to drug use. The first reference to pingers is reported to be in the glossary of an Australian surfing book published in 2003. The drug they purchase could be completely different to what they expected.Įxplainer: what is nitrous oxide (or nangs) and how dangerous is it?ĭrug slang is part of the music festival vernacular. Most festival goers attend few events and are only occasional users of illegal drugs, so they may be unfamiliar with slang names and what drug they refer to. The term ‘pinger’ (or pinga) is thought to be an Australian creation used to refer to MDMA. MDMA (3,4- methylenedioxymethamphetamine), or ecstasy, is one of the drugs people take most commonly at music festivals. PingersĪs we find ourselves at the height of music festival season, let’s look at a timely example. Researchers also believe they get better results from surveys if they use the same language as people using drugs. The slang words can be metaphors for the drug effects or appearance, giving health professionals an understanding of a person’s drug use experience.
Another study used slang terms in Instagram hashtags to document drug use patterns.įor clinicians and researchers, slang offers insights into drug users’ beliefs and behaviours, which can in turn guide interventions. More recently, one study analysed Twitter posts to identify new slang. The authors found people in prison, who commonly used opiates, knew more slang words for heroin than college students did. In 1979, researchers created a drug slang association test to identify if the number of slang names people knew related to their use of a drug type. With this in mind, researchers seek to identify drug subcultures through understanding language use. The use of slang indicates a person uses drugs because they know the secret language of a subculture. The use of slang can indicate to others a person uses drugs. The definition included how beginners were taught special smoking techniques by hostesses, likely sex workers. For example, Maurer’s glossary featured the term ‘to vipe’, meaning to smoke marijuana. The definitions reflect the social and cultural values around drug-taking practices at the time. The aim was to guide law enforcement as well as to inform doctors, parents and teachers about drug use. A bit of historyĬlinicians and people who study drug use have attempted to catalogue slang terms for drug use since the 1930s.ĭavid Maurer, an American linguistics professor who studied the use of language in the American underworld, published the first glossary of drug slang terms in 1936. The use of language around drugs is important because people using drugs referred to by slang names could misunderstand what they’re getting.Īt the same time, tuning in to drug slang offers researchers and health workers an avenue by which to track patterns of drug use. From pingers (MDMA), to fishies (GHB) to going into the K-hole (ketamine), slang use marks someone as an insider with knowledge and experience of illicit drug use. Slang names or street names for drugs are common. Tasmanian Times was intrigued by this linguistic approach to understanding drug use and reproduces it with thanks to The Conversation. The issue of pill testing is likely to come up again this year, regardless of whether we finish the summer without a drug-related festival tragedy. Tasmania is still in party mode with events like Party in the Paddock, Fractangular and more.
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