BRITAIN IN GRIP OF DRUG CULTURE

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LONDON - Britain is in a drug frenzy, with an epidemic of stories
about high-flying celebrities and low-life addicts laying bare the
extent of the craze.

To hear the tabloid press tell it, top sports figures regularly snort
cocaine, posh society is awash with pills and powders, and
recreational drug users have even penetrated the BBC.

>From a celebrated novelist who took heroin in the washroom of the
prime minister's plane to the pop star who compares getting high to
drinking tea, drugs are omnipresent.

"Celebrities using drugs just reflect the rest of society. Drugs are
very much part and parcel of youth culture and are likely to remain
so," says Mike Goodman, director of Release, a legal advice charity.

Heroin use is rising among the young and poor as prices drop, while
cocaine is as common as Chianti in many professional circles in which
people are cash-rich and weary from the working week.

It's estimated the equivalent of $16 billion (U.S.) is spent on
illegal drugs each year in Britain.

"What we are finding is the normalization of drug-taking," says Keith
Hellawell, the official charged with spearheading the government's
drive against drugs. He released his first report on the epidemic in
May.

Be it designers dressing waifish models in "heroin chic" or
advertisers selling mundane household products with trippy imagery,
narcotics are entrenched in daily life.

"Drugs are all over and they're here to stay," says Lotte McGrand of
Dazed And Confused, a magazine with the pulse on youth culture.

"Drugs are so common, it would be even hipper for kids not to take
them."

Social Trends, an annual survey by the government, says 8 per cent of
12-year-olds, 30 per cent of 14-year-olds and 40 per cent of
16-year-olds have tried drugs at least once. Teenage ecstasy deaths
barely warrant a mention in a jaded press and Britain's thriving club
and music industries weave drugs ever tighter into the fabric of youth
culture.

The upcoming movie Human Traffic, an insider's view of drugs and clubs
in Wales, is touted as this summer's hit film just as Trainspotting
stole headlines with its gritty portrayal of life among Scotland's
junkies.

A study of all 15 European Union members shows three times as many
young Britons have experimented with the rave drug ecstasy than their
counterparts in France or Germany. Young Britons are also much more
likely to have used hallucinogens, amphetamines and solvents,
according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs.

Last month, Tom Parker Bowles -- son of Gamma Parker Bowles, godson of
Prince Charles and a friend to Britain's young princes -- was caught
in a classic "honey trap" when he allegedly offered to buy cocaine for
a reporter posing as a debutante at the Cannes Film Festival.

Days later, the captain of England's rugby team was forced to resign
when he, too, was lured into boasts of drug use and dealing by an
undercover tabloid reporter.

Drugs have even invaded the soccer field, with Liverpool striker
Robbie Fowler answering taunts from the stands by pretending to snort
cocaine off the goal line.

A children's television host, a popular actor, a BBC disc jockey --
the list of alleged users fingered in the media grows ever longer.

"It's deplorable. It's giving an abysmal, appalling example to young
people. There's no glamour in drug-taking. It wrecks lives, it wrecks
health and ruins families," says Jack Cunningham, the minister
co-ordinating the government's anti-drug strategy.

The government recently unveiled tough new targets to crack down on
drug abuse, emphasizing treatment over punishment. It wants to cut the
number of young people using heroin or cocaine by a quarter by 2005
and a half by 2008, saying addicts are responsible for 30 per cent of
all crime.