Heroin shortage hits M62 corridor

I work part-time in substance misuse clinics in the North of England. Over the last few days, I've noticed lots of people coming in with problems that they didn't have before. Many people who had been using heroin, some of them for a long time, had been getting into unexpected problems caused by lack of availability of the drug at street-level.

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For the last few weeks, there has seemed to be an increasing trend that more and more of the people I see in clinics have been telling me that there is no decent heroin available. For some of them, this has been something which has spurred them into making a decision that they will stop using drugs, or seek treatment for their addiction. For some other people who haven't made this choice, there have been serious problems caused by the increasing scarcity.

Some people smoke heroin, some inject it, but many take it both ways at some time. One of the reasons people choose to smoke rather than inject is that it's generally safer; the drug enters your body more slowly so there's less chance of accidentally overdosing; there's less chance of injuring or poisoning yourself than there is with an injection and you're at less risk of catching blood-borne viruses like hepatitis C or HIV. On the other hand, the same amount of heroin has a greater effect if injected rather than smoked, so in times of scarcity more heroin users are tempted by this option.

The problem is further complicated by the fact that the street heroin market doesn't respond to supply and demand pressures like other commodities; for example, you might expect that when it's difficult to obtain heroin, the price would increase. This might be what happens at the point of import or large-scale distribution, but at street-level, the reduced availability of heroin results in another problem: the circulation in the market of heavily diluted or adulterated drugs. It's assumed that people at some point in the distribution chain are protecting their profits by mixing the drug with other substances.

What this means for heroin users is that they're faced with two problems: firstly, they may find that none of their usual sources have any heroin to sell; secondly, they may find that some people who are prepared to sell them 'heroin' are infact selling something that may contain little, if any, heroin, and any number of other dangerous substances to dilute it up to a saleable weight. These may have similar effects to heroin, or be very different. On this public forum, you can see professionals reporting these problems in Leeds, Barnsley, Bradford and Halifax.

Sadly there have been several cases recently of people injecting what they thought was heroin, only to result in poisoning by other chemicals. I've seen people who have had horrific injuries to their arms and legs caused by injection of something - I don't know exactly what - that has made them very ill, and if the injection has missed a vein, caused painful wounding and ulcers.

It seems that the 'war on drugs' in claiming some casualties at the moment. There are other sides to the argument but when I see this happening, it makes me think that it would be much better for everyone if heroin was legal; then at least users wouldn't have to deal with the current protectionism that disadvantages ordinary poppy-growers at the expense of pharmaceutical companies who manufacture the heroin-substitute drugs that the NHS is able to supply. I'm not usually a fan of "free markets", but this does seem like an example of great harm being caused by stopping imports of a foreign competitor's product.

If you think you might have injected yourself with something poisonous, go to hospital. If you want to know what your options are for getting into addiction treatment services, or to get more information about drugs in general, this website seems quite balanced in its advice.

Contact email: marker at indymedia dot org