Film Review: T2 Trainspotting: First there is an opportunity, and then there is a betrayal

Today, the issue of drug use divides opinions as much, if not more, than it did when the beautifully bleak brilliant British black comedy Trainspotting was released to an unsuspecting film audience in 1996.

In Scotland, we are regularly presented with accounts of drug use leading to poor health and criminality. Drug related crime, from a law and order perspective, form the mainstay of populist police reality television shows. Few consumers of such media have any reason to doubt the veracity of these lurid depictions of drug taking.

The original film, based on Irvine Welsh’s book set during the HIV AIDS crisis of the late 1980’s, suggests several memes in relation to drug use. The title of the book and the film refers to the track marks caused by repeated injecting, the visible signs of a long term illegal drug injector.