Police Information

New heroin outbreaks

Wed, September 19, 2001

Source: Howard Parker, Catherine Bury and Roy Egginton

New heroin outbreaks amongst young people in England & Wales

Police Research Group - Crime Detection and Prevention Series Paper  

Many areas in Britain were the sites of major heroin outbreaks during the mid 1980s.

Merseyside, Greater Manchester, London, the Scottish cities and towns down the western side of Britain were most affected. These outbreaks involved a minority of 18-25 year olds who were predominantly unemployed and lived in deprived urban areas. Their heroin careers lasted many years and users routinely became deeply involved in acquisitive crime, drug dealing and prostitution to supplement state benefits in funding expensive habits. This in turn caused community damage and placed enormous pressure on local policing and criminal justice services, social care and health budgets. Most areas eventually set up methadone-led treatment services to ‘manage’ this population of long-term users. 

While such ‘heavy end’ drugs careers continue, the 1990s has been dominated by the extensive ‘recreational’ use of drugs like cannabis, amphetamines and ecstasy, particularly by youth populations. During the first half of the 1990s heroin was eschewed by most young people as a highly addictive drug used only by ‘junkies’. However, since around 1996 signs, indicators and rumours that heroin is making a return have been building. 

As a consequence and in the continuing absence of any other ‘early warning systems’ this audit was commissioned. It involved a national postal survey of all police forces and Drug Action Teams (DATs) in England and Wales. Over two hundred separate returns were received from police, probation, social services, doctors, drugs services, outreach workers, thanks to excellent networking by local DATs. Returns were made by 73% of DATs and 86% of police forces, giving good geographical representation across the country. The survey was supplemented by extensive telephone interviewing and fieldwork visits to numerous towns and cities to interview local professionals and young heroin users. 

Main findings

This research focused on ‘under 19s’ (so does not provide the whole heroin picture) and was concerned with the perceived spread of new heroin outbreaks. It cannot quantify or enumerate the number of users, which remains unknown even to the affected areas. The following are the key findings. 

· 80% of DAT networks and 81% of police forces making returns reported recent or new clusters or, in some cases, full scale outbreaks of heroin use within their jurisdictions. This is an unprecedented spread profile which the report maps in detail. 

· These outbreaks are not currently occurring in the old heroin areas (e.g. N.W.

England, London) nor in many rural areas but they are colonising in most regions of England, particularly N.E. England, Yorkshire, West Midlands, Avon and S.W. England. The first outbreaks began around 1993-4 primarily in large towns/small cities with a heroin ‘footprint’ from the past (and therefore with established user/dealer networks). However, heroin use is now occurring in completely new areas with no heroin history and the spread pattern suggests many communities will see its arrival during this and next year. Young people in these areas initially have only limited understanding of heroin’s potency and dependency potential. 

· There is evidence that this spread of heroin use is supply led, being marketed in a form and at a price, which is attractive to young, new users. A fall in price, strong availability, with purity remaining high, all indicates a sustained supply. Heroin has been actively marketed as ‘brown’, as smokable and in £5 and £10 deals in new markets. Distributors use the motorway networks to link the ‘kilo’ middle level suppliers often found in the old heroin cities, with the ‘ounces’ dealers and on to the town level, home based and ‘mobile’ dealers. A £10 bag contains one tenth to one sixteenth of a gram of heroin with a 20%-50% purity. With an ounce of heroin costing around £800 and producing over 300 £10 wraps destined for the street user-buyer, profits are enormous at all points in the supply and distribution chain. This ensures the heroin market makers are highly determined, increasingly sophisticated and thus particularly difficult to apprehend and convict. 

· Most of the new young users taking up heroin use can be described as ‘socially excluded’, coming from the poorest parts of the affected towns and cities. However, there is a spectrum of susceptibility and clear signs of a broader penetration with heroin use being found amongst ‘bonded’ in education/in work youth from more affluent families. This section of new users tends to come from those involved in the serious end of recreational drug use. There is some evidence of heroin being used as a ‘chill out’ drug by young adult clubbers. Currently more young men than young women are trying heroin. Ethnic minority populations have been affected. Most new users begin by smoking and ‘chasing’ heroin but a significant move towards injecting is widely reported in the survey. 

· The age of onset (first trying) has been falling for all drug initiation but it must be of particular concern that a significant proportion (over a third) of the ‘under 19s’ age group were described as under 16 years of age. This suggests that the overall at risk age group should be defined as 14-25 years. 

Points for action

These findings have a number of implications for police forces, DATs, and others involved in tackling drug misuse and dealing with its consequences. 

Monitoring

DATs and DRGs need to carefully monitor the situation in their own areas, to assess the scale of the problem, spread potential and likely outcomes in terms of problems for young users, drug related crime and demand on local services. Use should be made of all sources of information, including intelligence from local professionals such as GPs, police officers, outreach workers and street agency staff. Local strategies should be developed to respond appropriately. The information collected locally could be fed into a national system that would provide a means of identifying and monitoring developments of national significance. 

New services for young people

DATs should review current services for young people and, in the light of what is known about the local problem, consider whether these are sufficient and appropriate. These services should not automatically be modelled on methadone prescribing. It may be better to provide a ‘user friendly’ intake and assessment service, which channels young problem users to specialist services. These may include needle exchanges, detoxification, social and employment skills training and, where appropriate and necessary, methadone prescription. 

Strategic policing 

‘Taking out’ heroin dealers at the local level may not stem local supply as replacement dealerships quickly emerge. A more sophisticated approach is required, involving a multi-agency strategy at the local level and co-ordinated national and ‘cross border’ policing to disrupt the heroin distribution systems which network the country. Police action disrupt supply and create heroin droughts should be implemented as part of wider strategy, to anticipate and respond to what young heroin users would do locally in drought conditions, for example: 

· would they travel elsewhere for supply, and if so where; 

· would they transfer to street methadone, tranquillisers or cannabis; 

· would and could they seek help from a local service or respond to a peripatetic service taken to them.

 

To view the full paper click the URL below