LIFE ON THE STREETS OF BRITAIN AS A DEALER

Words by Sarah Shenker and Pictures by Christophe Tweedie MSN NEWS

ZIGGI and Dan used to be drug dealers. But when the childhood friends
stumble upon a bargain, one of them usually picks up where they left off,
until they’ve unloaded the goods.

You could call them opportunistic dealers.

Mostly they dealt cannabis, but Ziggi has dealt speed, pills, LSD. Probably
cocaine too, but he won’t say either way. Both are articulate and
successful in their current jobs. Ziggi is married and has a baby.

Dan toked on his first joint when he was about six or seven. His dad used
to smoke occasionally in front of the TV. From the age of ten he would go
to west London with his friends to buy cannabis. If they were lucky, they
wouldn’t get conned (ending up with grass and dirt instead of weed or resin).

“When you’re about twelve or thirteen you get to know the whereabouts of
the local ‘frontline’, and basically you go down there and you get to know
the people. Before you know it you’re looking after their kids and watching
them weigh out kilos. You’re in their flat and you can see outside 16
police vans, and you’re thinking ‘ I should be in school and I’m going to
be in trouble’, but it all blows over.” Dan’s never been arrested.

He got into dealing “cos so many people smoked weed and because we smoked
so much weed So what you’re doing is selling it but often you’re just
smoking it. You’re providing a service to them and to yourself. But you
don’t really make much money from weed unless you’re bringing over
ridiculous amounts.”

Ziggi describes the process: “To deal, you’ve got to find someone who deals
and find out where they get their supply from. For us it was quite easy
because of all the people we knew. You’re always going to get close enough
to someone who’ll take you round their supplier. They get to know your face
and you go round there on your one time and just say ‘Look, what can you do
me for?’. But what you want to do is get to his supplier.” Cut out the
middlemen, and you get a better deal.

“See, dealers come in different levels. You have your small-time dealer -
he deals in ounces. He’ll pick up an ounce for £80, and the max he can sell
it for is £120. Then the next level up, you’re buying 9-bars. You’ll pick
up a 9-bar for about £600.”

“If you get three of those, you can pick them up for £400,” Dan adds.

“If you can buy in kilos then you’re going to get a really good deal,”
Ziggi says. He goes on to explain how to make money dealing speed and LSD.
“In Finland you can sell a trip for £15 and here you can buy a sheet of 100
trips for 50p each. I knew a guy who was writing letters to his friends on
trip, mailing them to Finland, and they were mailing him cheques back. And
it’s still going on.”

When he felt himself getting in too deep, Dan quit dealing. “You get people
dropping in at your house at any hour in the morning. You feel like you’re
getting slowly closed in, closed in, like something bad’s going to happen
So you just say ‘f**** it’.”

Ziggi explains: “To be making money dealing - and you’re not skanking
anybody - you’ve got to be in you’re house virtually 24 hours a day. You’re
a prisoner in your own house because if you go out, you lose £50, and then
people might not come back. They might go somewhere else because around
here, there’s probably a dealer on every street.”

Neither of them believes that by indulging in cannabis they place
themselves on a very slippery slope. Dan insists: “It’s a social thing.
You’re in a club, if someone has a spliff, you wanna smoke it. You get a
little high,” he drawls, “and it’s a nice high and it’s harmless. It’s
refreshing,”

“Everything else is anti-social,” he continues. “E, you’re on your own.
Trip, you’re on your own. Coke, you’ve got a problem, crack, you’ve
definitely got a problem. Heroin, you’re dead.”

HEROIN IS A MAJOR THREAT TO SOCIETY

Police Chief Warns Of Massive Increase In Drug Abuse

Words by Sarah Shenker and Pictures by Christophe Tweedie MSN NEWS

DETECTIVE Chief Inspector Gerry Dickinson has been fighting drugs since
joining the police 28 years ago.

The walls of his office are covered with merit awards and commendations,
and group photographs with smiling colleagues. There are anti-drug campaign
posters too, and a worn-out map of Great Britain. In a prominent place is a
certificate: Dickinson is not just the head of the West Yorkshire police
drug squad, he is also a qualified irish whiskey taster.

Just like with the whiskey, Dickinson is passionate about his work.

He is particularly successful: his team has seized more than £4 million
worth of drugs in the past fortnight. They just arrested a pusher who dealt
to 12 year-olds at a school gate.

DCI Dickinson is in an ideal position to chart how the drugs culture has
changed over the years.

The drugs culture then was very different to what it is today. “I can
remember when there were three registered drug addicts in this area and now
we’re up to the thousands.”

His interest in the drugs culture has always been a bit of a crusade. “I
was interested because the youth of my era was involved with cannabis, the
long hair and the bead’s and the flower power and the LSD. I got an
interest in stopping its growth because of the inherent dangers which you
could see were coming and I’ve now seen arrive.”

“You could see there was going to be problems. Contrary to what a lot of
people say, I can say I have seen the person who started on smoking dope,
move on and on and on, and they are drug addicts. Smoking dope is the start
of a downfall.”

He is concerned with the current direction of the drugs culture. “My worry
is that we’ve got them not even bothering with the dope, speed or ecstasy.

They’re going straight onto the smack. Heroin and cocaine used to be barely
heard of. Now it’s at epidemic proportions.”

“Heroin is our greatest concern at the moment. It’s got to be. We’ve had a
200 per cent increase in seizures in the last year in West Yorkshire.”

“A lot of people quote the number of registered addicts,” he said, “but
they’re not my worry. In effect, they are being given the help, we’re
getting them off the heroin.

It’s all the unregistered ones which are my worry. They need the help.
What’s the point in me referring a drug addict to an agency for treatment
but there’s going to be three to four months until there’s a bed available?
That’s no good.”

As for dealers, he is worried by increased production of heroin, especially
from traditional cocaine production areas, such as Columbia: “I understand
that you’re getting situations where for every 5 kilos of coke you buy now,
you’ve got to buy a kilo of heroin. They’re pushing the smack trade. We’re
getting to the stage now where there’s the very strong opinion - and I
agree with it - that we’ve got very, very clever, influential business
people who are purposely keeping the prices down until we’ve got a vast
amount of people totally addicted to it, and then they can boost the price
to whatever they wish.”

“Drug pushers are the lowest of the low. I’ve no qualms, no thoughts on
giving them anything in their favour. They’re just the lowest of the low.”

He is equally harsh about the recreational users: “I don’t like the name
“recreational user” at all,” he insists. “There ain’t no recreational drug
user. There are drug users, who are running the riskof harming themselves.
I won’t condone any drug use.”

WE’RE IN DANGER OF LOSING THE DRUGS WAR

Coroners Warn Of The Number Of Young Deaths Because Of Drugs

Words by Sarah Shenker and Pictures by Christophe Tweedie MSN NEWS

ANDRE REBELLO believes Britain is in grave danger of losing the war against
drugs.

He should know.

Since he became a coroner three years in Blackpool he has become sicked by
the waste of young lives claimed by drug abuse.

The situation become so grave in the north west of England this year that
Rebello and three other coroners from Lancashire called an emergency news
conference to warn the public about the numbers of heroin and methadone
related deaths.

The coroners feel the deaths are being ignored and they had to take
dramatic action to highlight the problem.

One of his colleagues, Anne Hind, coroner for Blackpool, had seen a 17
year-old boy die from a heroin overdose a couple of weeks before.

“We felt we had to bring drug deaths to the attention of the public in a
dramatic way.” he said

“It had been something that had been constant over many years, we thought
it was going to get worse before it got better and therefore by calling a
press conference we were hoping to increase public awareness with regards
to protecting their own families and to bring the message home to the
health authorities and to the government that perhaps new initiatives were
needed to try and do something.

“The situation will get worse,” he warned, “until there are more resources
found with regard to effective treatments and care for addicts. Methadone
is a short-term solution. People can get addicted to methadone and be on it
for many, many years.

The reaction to their grim warning has been positive.

“I’ve had a lot of encouragement from families of victims who’ve suffered
fatal consequences as a result of taking methadone.”

Methadone is prescribed by doctors to drug addicts in an attempt to ween
them off heroin. Andre Rebello believes that a lot of doctors are
intimidated by drug addicts and may prescribe methadone in an attempt to
get the addicts out of their surgeries.

The consequences of there being few specialists dealing with drug addicts
mean that “there are more cases attributable to methadone, a prescribed
drug, than to heroin. Prescribed methadone is being used as a currency for
heroin and getting into the hands of inexperienced users with fatal
consequences.”

But Rebello is quick to point out that he is not pointing the finger of
blame onto anyone. “One thing which everyone has to appreciate is that
coroners don’t have any solutions,” he said. “Our job is to draw attention
to matters, which if not remedied, could cause future fatalities.”

He’s been in talks with the Home Secretary, who he believes is prepared to
make changes to the ways in which methadone is prescribed, and to explore
the options of custodial sentencing.

As for why people get themselves into such situations in the first place,
Rebello is mystified: “I don’t know why people take drugs,” he said. “All I
know is it’s becoming more and more accepted by young people as a route to
escapism.”

He was not dealt with an ecstasy death in his area, but “Ecstasy is a drug
taken by na users,” he believes, “trying to find some extra fulfilment in
life which perhaps isn’t there.

“It’s not a leisure drug, it’s a category A drug, categorised by government
scientists as being a dangerous substance and I have fellow coroners in
Lancashire who have dealt with ecstasy deaths and I understand they are
quite horrendous.”

The battle against drugs is a war which we are in extreme danger of losing,
according to Rebello. “It is a war and there are fatalities. There are
casualties, and the paramedics get to an awful lot that don’t get to me as
coroner.”

I CAN’T STOP MY CHILDREN TAKING DRUGS

Words by Sarah Shenker and Pictures by Christophe Tweedie MSN NEWS

SUSAN FORD looks at the basket at her feet. “What’s this?,” she asks,
poking it with her foot. “What’s this?,” she repeats, this time laughing.
The basket is crammed full of Rizla papers, cigarettes and small tins. It
belongs to her second daughter, Ann.

Ann smokes dope and her mother knows it, although she usually pretends not
to tolerate it even when she smokes it in front of her. In fact, despite
her initial claims to the contrary, Susan has smoked cannabis before herself.

“Oh, maybe I had a few drags on your cannabis cigarette,” she says to Ann.

“It was just to see what you were talking about, but I couldn’t see that it
was any different from any other cigarette.”

Susan, who refused to let MSN News use her real name, has three daughters,
aged 26, 23 and 16. All three have dabbled in drugs, from cannabis to
cocaine, all with their mother’s full knowledge - if not tacit consent.

She found out about her eldest daughter Angela’s habits when, at
university, she told her mother she had eaten a hash cake. “I said ‘Oh. Did
you? Why?’. Clearly it was something they were fairly used to doing
although I don’t think it was widely available when she was at school.”
What Susan was soon to find out however was that Angela’s habits were a bit
more sophisticated. She was doing cocaine, and even introduced Ann to it.
With the added help of her boyfriend James, Ann was heavily into cocaine by
the time she was twelve.

“The first time I knew about it is when she had this row with James and
wouldn’t go over to a friend’s house because they were going to be taking
drugs.” Ann rowed with James after an incident at a friend’s house where
had been held at gun point by a sixteen year-old high on god knows what,
and James had hid in the loo rather than try to help her. She was fourteen.

As for the youngest daughter Amy, Ann claims: “She had her first joint when
she was nine, with my mum.”

Susan denies it, of course. “Amy has tried cannabis, I know she’s tried
cannabis, okay?” is her terse reply.

Yet Susan’s tolerance of her children’s illicit and illegal drug
experiments is merely a reflection her initial experiences with Angela.

“I was much more strict with Angela, and the only result was that she did
it behind my back.”

“You can’t actually stop kids from doing things - if their peer group are
all doing it, they’ll be doing it. I’d rather know what they’ll be doing.
I’ve never said ‘Don’t do this or that’, I’ve just said ‘If you do that,
this might happen, that might happen.”

Angela believes her laissez-faire policy has paid off in the case of her
youngest daughter, Amy. “It seems to me as if everybody in her class has
tried cannabis, and they seem to think it’s terribly clever to take Es, but
I’d be surprised if she was still doing drugs. She’s seen it, done it and
knows it’s a waste of time.”

Susan doesn’t strech as far as believing in legalisation. She agrees that
the new Labour government doesn’t seem too interested in changing existing
drug policy, but believes a serious clampdown is on its way. “I’m sure
government policy will change as soon as Tony Blair’s children become of a
vulnerable age. His children are now in school,so the priority is
‘education, education, education’, but as soon as they get to 16 and they
get a sniff of drugs, there will be a clampdown on drugs. I’m just waiting
for it.”

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT NOT TO JUDGE DRUG USERS

Release Is Concerned About The Rise In Heroin

Words by Sarah Shenker and Pictures by Christophe Tweedie MSN NEWS

Catherine Perez-Phillips spends most of her day talking to drug users.

She has been working for the Release since she left university eight years
ago. She works mainly on the telephones, and knows exactly what the current
trends are. “We’re seeing more calls about heroin, undoubtedly. What we get
calls about does vary according to what’s being written about in the press,
but in the last year, we’ve seen an increase in heroin use among young
people. There’s more of it around and the prices have dropped slightly.”

Release is a drugs charity, but of a special kind. It’s a source of
information, legal advice and counselling for the curious and the
desperate, an independent lifeline for those affected by drugs.

It also runs a telephone helpline which receives over 20,000 calls a year.
Callers aren’t all heavy users or addicts. Some people call because they’re
facing a drugs screen at work, some people call because they are worried
about a friend, partner or relative, some people call for legal advice.
Release deal with all aspects of the drug problem.

Yet despite being faced with such difficult and painful calls from drug
addicts, Catherine believes that having a non-judgmental attitude is the
most important thing about being drugs counsellor.

“It’s about not judging people for their drug use, not trying to assign
blame for the problems people get themselves into through their drug use,”
she said. “Drug users are acutely sensitive that maybe people will say
‘it’s your fault, you got yourself into this mess, anybody could know that
by taking heroin, you can get into problems’. I think that is the most
important thing: not to judge.”

Counsellors are also expected to have a balanced view about drug taking.
“You need to understand that there are positive reasons for why people use
drugs as well as bad ones. People wouldn’t use drugs unless there were nice
things about that experience.

“You also have to be willing to listen to people and not impose your own
experiences about drug use.” Many counsellors and volunteers at Release are
themselves ex-drug addicts. “Just because something was right for one
person doesn’t mean that it’s going to be right for another person,” she
pointed out.

Release also deals with prescription drug abuse, although other helplines
focus solely on illicit drug use. This can be a problem, especially because
according to Catherine, there are large amount of people currently addicted
to prescribed benzodiapezine tranquillisers, who aren’t being properly
diagnosed. “We talk to people who were first prescribed benzodiapezine
tranquillisers as long as 20 years ago. Other lines don’t engage in talking
to tranquilliser users, and they often find it hard to find someone to talk
to.” As to why doctors issue repeat prescriptions to patients who have
become dependent on tranquillisers, Perez-Phillips believes that doctors
are pushed for time, and find it simpler to prescribed than to talk to
their patients about their condition.

She is also worried about the difficulties some people have in getting
treatment for drug addiction. “There can be waiting lists for people to get
into treatments and that’s really worrying. I think that when someone
decides that they want some help, they should be able to do that quickly
and not have to wait, sometimes three months for an appointment.”

The Prime Minister has not mentioned improving treatment facilities for
drug addicts in his plans for tackling the drugs problem.

The government is also opposed to changes in the law, but Release believe
that change is necessary and could be beneficial. “We would like to see a
review of the law and a Royal Commission to look at drugs legislation,”
Perez-Phillips said, “but we’re not being prescriptive - I don’t think we
can be. We just want to law to be looked at because it’s not working.”

© 1997 MSN News UK