Dealers' techniques have had alarming success

HEROIN'S NEW IMAGE HOOKS TEENAGERS

Battlefields on the front line

DRUG-PUSHERS have changed the image of heroin so successfully that its us
e
has reached epidemic proportions in many British towns and cities, a
government report said yesterday.

Even teenagers from affluent, middle-class families are using a drug that
their counterparts would have dismissed 15 years ago as only for older
junkies. The targets of the drug-dealers are teenagers who regularly take
"recreational" drugs such as cannabis and Ecstasy.

Children as young as 14 are smoking and injecting heroin, many of them
unaware that it is addictive. In some areas, children as young as 10 had
taken the Class-A drug.

The drug-dealers also use mobile phones and pagers to deliver the drug to
users' homes or to a car park or pub.

Most heroin users were socially excluded and lived in disadvantaged
districts, but they also included some affluent and middle-class people w
ho
frequently indulged in "recreational" drugs.

It is the success of dealers in changing the image of heroin over the pas
t
15 years that is the most remarkable finding of the study. In the 1960s a
nd
1970s, heroin users were people in their twenties, seen as pursuing a hip
py
way of life; but in the 1980s they were viewed as social inadequates. The
se
days, in an attempt to change its bad image, dealers are selling heroin a
s
"brown" or "browns" and as a powder that can be smoked, like cannabis, at
a
cost of about A310 a bag, much the same as the price of an Ecstasy table
t.
"The message, of course, is that heroin is apparently no more expensive a
nd
little different from other 'recreational' illicit drugs," the Home Offic
e
study, New Heroin Outbreaks Amongst Young People in England and Wales,
said. "The heroin outbreaks spreading across Britain are primarily a
product of purposeful supplying and marketing. The precursor to all of th
is
had been the strong, sustained availability of pure, inexpensive heroin
primarily from southwest Asia."

The techniques adopted by dealers have produced a new wave of heroin use
by
young people, especially in towns and cities that escaped the ravages of
the big heroin outbreaks of the 1980s. "There is little doubt that a seco
nd
wave of new, young heroin users is emerging," the report said. "With 80 p
er
cent of areas confidently identifying new outbreaks within their
communities and providing such a consistent picture and profile of new
users it is, unfortunately, reasonable to suggest that we are facing a
second heroin epidemic."

It found areas with no previous heroin history becoming the sites for new
outbreaks, including parts of southwest England such as housing estates i
n
Bristol. Other towns in the grip of a heroin epidemic are Gateshead,
Hartlepool, Hull, Dewsbury, Bradford and Birmingham. Most regions in
England and Wales report serious outbreaks of heroin use as a result of
strong availability of the drug from southwest Asia, and new operators
using motorways to link big suppliers in cities such as Manchester, Londo
n
and Liverpool with dealers in smaller towns and estates. The profits of
dealing in heroin are enormous: an ounce of heroin costs a dealer about
A3800 and produces more than 300 bags priced at A310 each. The high ret
urns
mean that there are always dealers ready to replace anyone seized by the
police.

The report highlighted the role of Turkish processing plants and criminal
networks in organising the transport of heroin from Asia to this country.
It called for urgent action to set up services for young people and for
heroin users, and a co-ordinated approach to tackle the supply network.
Battlefields on the front line Two of the areas facing a heroin problem a
re
Gateshead and Hull. Gateshead, population 92,400, has seen heroin use
increase since 1994, aggravating a drug scene dominated by heavy drinking
and tranquilliser abuse. The police say that a small number of
well-organised dealers based at home and communicating by mobile phone ar
e
setting up on the town's estates selling bags of heroin for between A35
and
A310. "Smoking brown" was perceived by many young users as an extension
of
their drug abuse based on alcohol, cannabis, solvents, amphetamines and
minor tranquillisers, the report said. In the North East, Goole and
Bridlington are experiencing new outbreaks of heroin use, but Hull,
population 240,000, is experiencing a full-scale outbreak of heroin use
based on a small network of 1980s users. The report said Hull had a
particularly susceptible population living in relative poverty.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski