A country swamped with cut-price drugs

LONDON - The cost of drugs in many parts of Britain has plummeted in the past year, an authoritative study reveals.

Specialists also disclosed that the potentially lethal practice known as "speedballing", in which users inject a mixture of heroin and cocaine, is reaching epidemic levels. The low price of many drugs suggests they are readily available throughout the country and that police and customs are losing the war on drugs.

A new survey of 20 cities and towns provides an insight into trends, offering a level of local detail rarely seen before. The report by the charity DrugScope found that dealers have been increasingly offering cut-price drugs, with heroin costing £5 ($14.60) a bag in Middlesbrough, and Ecstasy as little as 75p ($2.20) a tablet in Cardiff.

Towns such as Gloucester and Penzance - where the price of heroin has dropped from £60 ($175.50) to £40 ($117) a gram during the past year - are being targeted with "special offers" to attract new users.

The survey also found that abuse of muscle-enhancing anabolic steroids is becoming a mainstream problem.

Overall drug prices in Britain continued to remain static - suggesting that police and customs action has had little effect on availability. When supply is restricted, prices rise.

A separate report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has also claimed that Britain has the highest rate of "problem" drug abuse in Europe. It found that nearly one in every 100 of the working-age population was an addict.

The DrugScope report discovered huge regional variation in the cost and availability of drugs.

The purity of drugs also fluctuates throughout the country. In Liverpool a seemingly cheap 0.3g £15 ($44) bag of "heroin" is on average only 25 per cent pure. The cheapest cocaine, £35 ($102.50) a gram, is available in Birmingham and Liverpool - both cities where drugs are generally cheaper than the rest of the country. Cardiff has the cheapest Ecstasy pills.

Researchers also found clubbers were using a wide range of drugs, including CK1, GHB, Viagra and a vast array of obscure designer drugs.

But the most alarming development highlighted by the study for the drug charity's Druglink magazine was the rise in "speedballing" or "snowballing", which specialists fear will result in more overdoses, infections, and crime. The survey of 80 frontline drug agencies and police forces discovered that injecting the heroin and cocaine cocktail, also called "curry and rice", had risen sharply in the past year in Newcastle, Sheffield, Manchester, London, Bristol, Nottingham, Ipswich and York.

A second study of 100 drug addicts revealed that speedballing was the main method of drug-taking for 80 per cent of those interviewed, compared with 25 per cent a decade ago.

The research by Dr Russell Newcombe at the Manchester drugs charity Lifeline found that speedballers had three times as many convictions as those only using heroin. It said speedballers spent £500 ($1465) a week on the drugs - £26,000 ($76,100) a year - compared with £110 ($322) for heroin-only addicts.

Speedballers say the combined stimulant-sedative effects in one shot complement each other.

"You get the euphoric rush of the crack and then the heroin takes the jagged edge off it," said one user.

In a separate study of injecting drug-users, more than half of 1000 needle exchange clients questioned in Wigan, Reading, Middlesbrough, Manchester, Bristol and Devon had injected a speedball. Drug agencies are concerned about speedballing because it increases the risk of overdose. People who speedball also inject up to five times more often than heroin-only injectors, which means they are more likely to inject directly into an artery, block veins and get deep vein thrombosis and abscesses.

High-profile deaths attributed to speedballing include US actors John Belushi, 33, who died in 1982 at a Los Angeles hotel, and River Phoenix, 23, who died in 1993 outside a Hollywood nightclub. A speedball is usually made by crumbling a crack rock into a preheated spoon of heroin and a form of citric acid in water - which makes a soluble cocktail. It is then drawn into a syringe and injected. The average speedball costs £20 ($58.50), £10 ($29) each of crack and heroin.

More dealers are selling heroin in £10 bags rather than by the gram, and some parts of the country continue to report dealers offering "discount offers" on combined bags of heroin and crack cocaine, fuelling the speedball craze. In Liverpool, dealers are offering a free rock of crack for every two £10 bags of heroin bought, while in Ipswich buying a bag of "brown" and "white" together yields a £10 discount on a £30 ($88) purchase. In Gloucester, the price of the two drugs has halved since last year and in Penzance an influx of dealers from Liverpool has led to price cuts.

Harry Shapiro, the editor of Druglink, said: "Although speedballing isn't a new phenomenon, it is clearly on the increase and, if this trend continues, it will be bad news for attempts to reduce the spread of injecting-related diseases and the number of drug overdoses."

The survey also found that the popularity of anabolic steroids had rocketed, with significant use in Blackpool, London, Birmingham, Middlesbrough, Nottingham, Torquay, Cardiff, Manchester, Portsmouth, Luton and Newcastle. Traditionally used by bodybuilders, they are now being taken by young people to improve their physique. Side-effects can include reduced sperm count, kidney and liver problems, high blood pressure and increased aggression.

- INDEPENDENT