Heroin Britain

A beautiful spring day in the Georgian city of Bath. It is 3.30pm and mothers are picking up their children from school, while tourists mingle with professionals and students in the elegant shopping area.

It is the epitome of respectability and tranquillity; a world seemingly far removed from the seedy underworld of drugs, addiction and desperate deals.

You would be wrong, however, to think so. Within 20 minutes of arriving in the city centre, a young, middle-class woman has 'scored' in broad daylight; pocketing a 'wrap' of heroin for just £10.

That is how easy it is to obtain illegal Class-A drugs in Britain today. The same drugs which killed 21-year-old Rachel Whitear, once a promising student at Bath University before heroin addiction destroyed her life.

It was the image of Rachel's lifeless body which so horrified the nation this month, and reopened the debate on hard drugs.

For many parents, heroin remains the least of their concerns. While they worry about the 'club drugs' - Ecstasy, cannabis and cocaine - the common perception is that heroin is still a drug of deprivation, confined to sink estates and poor urban areas.

But nothing could be further from the truth. A Daily Mail investigation has revealed just how easily available heroin is and how dealers are peddling it in some of Britain's most desirable areas to girls like Rachel Whitear.

We sent six young female reporters out into middle-class areas all over the country to find out how easy it is to buy heroin, in places you would least expect to find it. By the end of the day, they had all 'scored' - one in minutes.

Whatever you may think, it serves as conclusive proof that heroin - smack, skag, horse, H, china white, whatever you want to call it - is now a part of the fabric of our society.

With the Government's increasingly 'softly, softly' approach to drug-taking and the Home Office's remarkable acceptance that 'for many

clubbers, taking drugs is an integral part of their night out', we discovered that if you hang around long enough - and sometimes not very long at all - the dealers will seek you out.

And if one dealer doesn't have what you want, he will know someone who does.

Let us start with Bath, the city where Rachel Whitear, a gifted pianist who left school with ten GCSEs, arrived two years ago to study psychology and sociology before dropping out when her addiction took hold.

Her death may still haunt the nation, but it has made no impact on the drug dealers only too keen to supply our 26-year-old undercover reporter with heroin.

Hanging around, just yards from Bath Abbey and the elite designer clothes shops, she is engaged in conversation within minutes by a friendly but scruffy young man who introduces himself as John.

Soon the conversation turns to drugs. He asks what she is looking for and when she replies heroin, he says he knows someone who can supply her with a fix ... provided there is £5 in it for him.

Asking for 20p to make a call from a phone box, he disappears. Before long, he returns and invites her to walk with him to the Theatre Royal, where his source will meet them in his van. He tells her the heroin is very good and that he had a fix that morning.

There is no mention of Rachel, but he tells her that a young girl recently gave him £200 to buy 20 wraps of heroin. He warns her that supplies are low and asks for £10 upfront because 'the dealer is paranoid about getting caught'.

Ten minutes later the dealer arrives; a smart but casually dressed man in his 20s walks down a path next to the ornate theatre. John follows and the dealer hands him a wrap of heroin for £10 and leaves without talking to our reporter.

John places the heroin, wrapped in clingfilm and a cigarette paper, into her hand as crowds of tourists mill past them. He repeatedly tells her how good the heroin is and invites her to meet up later if she wants more.

The 'wrap' is enough for just one fix and there is no way of knowing how pure the brown or off-white powder is, or whether it has been mixed with sugar, starch, powdered milk or other drugs such as morphine or ketamine (a veterinary anaesthetic) to bulk it out.

According to drugs charities, most youngsters start by smoking heroin, heating it with a lighter and then inhaling the fumes.

But many progress to injecting heroin - current street value £50 to £80 per gram - into veins or just beneath the surface of the skin, known as 'popping', for a more intense high.

A fleeting euphoria is followed by deep relaxation and removal of all anxiety which can last for hours. However, the body quickly develops a tolerance to heroin, and before long users need a fix just to feel normal and stave off the agonising withdrawal symptoms.

Those, like Rachel, who take heroin are playing Russian roulette with their lives and the risk of accidentally overdosing is ever present as they do not know how strong - or how clean - the dose is.

And if the heroin doesn't kill them, then hepatitis, HIV and septicaemia from sharing dirty needles might. Not that these risks prey on the minds of the desperate.

Our next port-of-call was the historic cathedral city of Exeter in Devon, home to one of Britain's leading universities. Residents and businesspeople wandering past the timberframed Jacobean buildings are blind to the heroin deals going on right under their noses.

Exeter's city centre is just a few miles from the rented bed-sit in Exmouth where Rachel's bloated body was discovered by police three days after her death.

During the evening, in a pub popular with students, our 24-year-old female reporter is approached within minutes by a shabbily dressed man called Dave who asks her: 'What do you want?'

When she replies 'smack', he says: 'I don't do the stuff myself. I'm a speed man. But I know just about every smackhead in this city. I can get some for you, no problem.'

Leaving the pub, they fall in with a group of fellow 'smack seekers'. There is money here and designer clothes. They look like a bunch of students on their way to a cinema.

There is a bizarre sense of camaraderie as they go in search of Dave's friend, 'Jason'. One young, middle-class girl, pretty but for the desperate look on her face, asks: 'Are you rattling? I'm rattling bad.'

Rattling, as increasing numbers of young people know, means suffering withdrawal symptoms from your last hit. They find Jason at a refuge on the other side of the city. Once again, we have found a willing dealer of hard drugs within minutes.

But tonight Jason has run out of supplies, such is the demand. Dave tells our reporter to meet him at a phone box in the High Street the following morning.

At 9.30am, amid the professionals arriving for work, there is no sign of Dave. However, a man called Craig approaches her asking for money. She asks if he knows Dave and he replies: 'Oh, are you looking to score, too?' Craig, it seems, also has a source for heroin. 'We'll get some,' he says, 'but we'll have to wait.'

As they hang around the High Street, they are joined by a beautiful young girl with long auburn hair, dressed in designer jeans, who looks like a student out shopping.

They have never met before, but all are waiting for the same thing. A fix. 'I didn't get any last night,' she says, telling them her name is Lucy. 'I really need some now.' Rolling a cigarette, she tells them about her last hit. 'It was good, clean stuff. Strong, too. Worth waiting for.'

A crowd of youngsters gathers around some phone boxes, two of them pretty teenage girls who murmur: 'It's on its way.' They are silently joined by a young professional man in a charcoal grey overcoat, suit, polished loafers and gelled hair also in search of smack.

By 10.30am, it seems there are more heroin users on the streets than shoppers. Then the dealer arrives. In his mid-20s, clean-cut and dressed in jeans, he looks like an ordinary, pleasant guy.

He crosses the road and walks down an alley. His 'clients' eagerly form an orderly queue in front of him. Our reporter is second in line. Because he doesn't recognise her, he demands to see 'track marks' (needle punctures) on her arms.

When she tells him the drug is for someone else, he relents and gives her three £20 wraps. She then walks away along the cobbled streets with her potentially lethal 'fix', for later tests reveal that one wrap contains just 10 per cent heroin while another has more than 46 per cent.

Most of the heroin sold in Britain comes from the Golden Crescent countries of South-West Asia, mainly Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. Smuggled in, it is distributed through a far-reaching network of dealers, filtering down through invisible channels to street level.

A recent study found that 275,000 people between 16 and 24 admitted taking Class A drugs every month. Most took Ecstasy, but more than 100,000 took cocaine, 10,000 took its deadly derivative crack and 18,000 took heroin - most heroin users being introduced to it by friends.

The National Programme On Substance Abuse Deaths shows that heroin accounted for 551 deaths in the year 2000, the largest number caused by any Class A drug and a steep increase on the 1993 figure of 187 deaths.

And no town or city, it would appear, is immune. The newly refurbished park outside East Oxford Health Centre is a magnet for children who play on the swings. It is an area heavily populated with university students.

After five minutes sitting on a park bench, our third undercover reporter is spotted by a 30-year-old man of Moroccan appearance wearing a blue baseball cap, who smiles as he cycles past. He stops and strikes up a conversation, telling the 26-year-old woman his name is Simon and he is a chef in the city.

When she offers him a cigarette, he replies: 'No, I don't smoke, only hash.' He invites her to share some at his home. When heroin is mentioned, he offers to get some, and cycles off.

Soon afterwards Simon returns on foot with a dreadlocked companion wearing a dark overcoat. The dealer simply says: 'Twenty minutes' before disappearing.

As they wait, Simon talks about the pleasures of smoking cannabis. The dealer reappears and Simon leaps up with the words: 'I get it for you now', and the reporter hands him £30. He returns with a peasized cellophane wrap of heroin.

As he leaves for work, Simon gives her his phone number and makes her promise that she will call again the next day. 'I go to work now. Tomorrow is my day off. We smoke, some tea, some TV, nice,' he says.

As our reporter walks out of the park, a police van draws up. Uniformed officers get out and walk around before driving off, oblivious to the deal which has taken place in front of unsuspecting parents watching their children play.

The sleepy resort of Bournemouth would also appear to have an easily available supply of heroin. At 8.45am our fourth reporter is handed a small wrap of heroin on a park bench on the Woodland Walk, a short stroll from Corpus Christi Roman Catholic Primary School.

A thin, dark-haired man in his 30s, phoned by a man who had approached her in the street offering drugs, casually walks up to her, takes her £10 note and tells her to call him if she needs more.

Miles away, in the sleepy dormitory town of Chester-le-Street, County Durham, with its cobbled marketplace, it is the same story.

Here, our 28-year-old reporter is approached in daylight by a man in his early 20s who recognises her from the pub the night before and a conversation she had about drugs.

'Need some smack?' he says. He takes her mobile number and calls that night, telling her to meet him on the outskirts of town where he is waiting in a car with blacked-out windows. Inside, he gives her a foilwrapped package in exchange for £50.

Then another man she has never seen before gets in and hands over another wrap. 'The first one was a decoy,' he says. 'Sometimes you find a handcuff on your wrist as soon as you hand it over. You can't be too careful with people you don't know.'

Finally, to the upper-crust Yorkshire town of Harrogate. Sitting in a fast-food restaurant, sipping tea, our sixth undercover reporter - a 28-year-old woman - watches the wealthy shoppers strolling past.

None realises that she is shopping for heroin, and there is no shortage of sellers. Falling into conversation with a group of young people in their mid-20s, hanging around a phone box, it is clear they are drug users.

Telling them her parents sent her to Harrogate from Leeds to keep her away from drugs, one young man laughs: 'Did your parents think you'd be all right in Harrogate? Think nothing goes on here in Harrogate? Well it's rife everywhere, the same everywhere.'

A handsome 23-year-old called Mark says he can get her drugs, and they head off to the outskirts of the town, joined by two friendly youths. They wait on a street corner next to a phone box, waiting for their 'score' to turn up, and chat about drugs. They tell her how they fell into heroin addiction and how they dream one day they will be off it.

An hour-and-a-half later Mark gets the call that the drugs are here. He goes around the corner to meet the dealer in his car and comes back with £100 worth of heroin. They go to a nearby house to split it up between them.

As they do so, there is no talk of Rachel Whitear. People like these lost interest in current affairs long ago.

Bidding her new 'friends' goodbye, our reporter leaves with her £10 share, amazed at just how easy it is for a young woman like her to be accepted into this life without so much as the blink of an eye.

All the drugs bought as part of the investigation were immediately taken to a Government licensed laboratory for testing and disposal. All the samples tested positive for heroin, the amounts ranged from 0.07gm to 31.8mg.