Peter James on Caroline Lucas and Brighton and Hove Drugs Commission

After MP Caroline Lucas called for safe spaces for drug users to be trialled in the UK, Peter exclusively reveals his experience of how the "dark world" of drugs affects those addicted to them.

Peter James

In 2011, for the tenth consecutive year, Brighton was given the unwelcome title of Injecting Drugs Death Capital of the UK.

Shocked, as so many of us were, Caroline Lucas MP decided to take action to investigate just what was going on, and set up a government funded initiative, The Brighton and Hove Drugs Commission.

She asked me if I would chair it, and my deputy chairman was Mike Trace, Maggie Thatcher’s former drugs “tsar.”

We could not have had a more wide-ranging group of experts participating actively in our meetings which took place regularly over the next 18 months.

Members included Detective Superintendent Graham Bartlett, then Commander of Brighton and Hove Police, the Chief Medical Officer for the city, representatives across all the health and social worker services, as well as a former heroin addict who was now helping others and the mother of an addicted daughter, both of whose lives had become a living hell.

‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’

My eyes were opened to the dark world of addicted drugs users in a way they had never been before, and two things soon became very clear: Firstly, no one wakes up in the morning and thinks, ‘I know what I’m going to do today, I’m going to become a drug addict'.

And secondly, there are some people who wake up in the morning and think to themselves, ‘I’m going to become a drug dealer and make a shed-load of money'.

To give an example of this latter, three years ago I was out in South London with the Police Violent Crimes Task Force.

At 2pm the officers I was with stopped and searched a 15-year-old youth who was standing on a street corner and acting very shiftily.

They found a quantity of Class A drugs on him. ‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’ one officer asked him. The youth looked the officer in the eye and replied; "I earned a hundred grand last year. That’s four times what you earned.”

'Being a heroin addict as like being controlled by a demon'

Two days ago I had lunch with a recovering drug addict who is on methadone. She is 45 and has been on and off heroin since her early twenties.

She first started taking it when an ex-boyfriend coerced her, convincing her it would help with the depression she was then suffering. Her life has been a nightmare ever since.

She described being a heroin addict as like being controlled by a demon.

She said it totally changes your personality because you will literally do anything for your next fix, whether that is stealing something or selling your body.

A bright, intelligent lady, she has been unable to work for the past 15 years, and even to take care of her children who were removed into care.

This was never her plan when, at 21, she looked forward to a career in the hospitality business.

'Every drug addict who dies is someone’s child, someone’s loved one and frequently someone’s parent.'

Part of the reason so many drug users die from overdoses is that when they buy their drugs, they have no idea what level of purity their – for instance – heroin is.

One dealer might cut (mix) just five per cent pure heroin with cement dust, or chalk or other substances. Another might cut 15 per cent pure, or even higher.

A person dependent on heroin used to buying from one dealer and dosing themselves with five per cent pure heroin who then buys from another could easily, inadvertently inject themselves with a three times higher level – and suffer a major overdose.

Without swift medical intervention, that person may very well die.

I visited Frankfurt, in 2014, where the enlightened government had pioneered the world’s first Drugs Consumption Room, in 1992.

This is an environment where addicts are able to bring their drugs (not buy them) and be given a clean kit of spoon, needle and saline solution, and a place to “cook” their heroin and inject, under the supervision of a roster of nurses, doctors and social workers.

In the event of an overdose, immediate expert medical help is on hand. In 1992, Frankfurt had an average of 147 drug overdose-related deaths a year. In 2013 that figure had dropped to 30. Approximately 117 lives saved every year.

The commission put this finding forward to the government with the suggestion we should try such an experiment ourselves – with a number of other countries having successfully adopted it and with substantial reductions in their death rates.

It was rejected out of hand with a crass response along the lines that hell would freeze over before a British government sanctioned such a thing.

I don’t have the statistic for how many injecting drug users across the UK have died in the intervening nine years, who might be alive now if some people in the government had had more wisdom, openness and courage.

I should make it clear that the commission did not advocate overdose prevention services being a replacement for programmes supporting people to stop misusing drugs, including those that advocate prohibition. They can and should exist alongside them, with all playing a valuable role in saving lives.

Every drug addict who dies is someone’s child, someone’s loved one and frequently someone’s parent.

These deaths are an ongoing tragedy, and the high level will continue until we realise that drug users are victims, who should be in hospital, and drug dealers are the criminals who should be in prison.