She Says the War on Drugs Killed Her Daughter This Week Will See Demonstrations Across the World Against Drugs Prohibition. And, in the UK, Parents Who Have Suffered Tragic Losses Are Among Those Pressing for Reforms That They Hope Will Save Lives On 17 July 1971 the US president, Richard Nixon, announced what has become known as the war on drugs, instigating an unrelenting campaign that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and billions of dollars. On the same date, 42 years later, in north Oxford, Martha Fernback, 15, and a friend bought a plastic sachet holding a crystallised gram of MDMA for UKP40 from a dealer. It was no impulse buy. Martha's online history revealed she had meticulously researched the risks of the drug and opted to buy its most expensive variant, assuming the better quality it was, the safer it would be. [continues 1862 words]
Britain is to target one of the most notorious Colombian cocaine syndicates by demanding the extradition of its key members to face trial in the UK. Prosecutors have drawn up a hit-list of targets connected to the powerful Cali cartel following evidence linking them to the supply of drugs throughout Britain. The development follows the first extradition to the UK from Colombia since the countries signed a treaty in 1889. Colombian national Carlos Arturo Sanchez-Corovado, 43, pleaded guilty at Southwark crown court on Friday to his involvement in Britain's biggest drugs ring, a London-based syndicate with direct links to the Cali cartel, once regarded as the world's dominant cocaine supplier. [continues 384 words]
Anti-drug campaigns are often useless, comic or counterproductive. Mark Townsend reports Twenty-two years have passed since the BBC's Grange Hill depicted the descent of Zammo Maguire - played by Lee MacDonald - into drug-addled hell. Out of his mind on heroin, Zammo was plagued by zits and wore a stupefied expression. To millions, heroin just seemed a bit rubbish. Three years later I bumped into 'Zammo' in a nightclub in the Lake District. His spots had cleared up and he was surrounded by women. Sure, Zammo had fame, but in truth he was no looker. Instead, his appeal seemed incontrovertible proof that the drugs do work. [continues 608 words]
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Opium The Romantic poet composed one of his most famous works after taking laudanum in 1797. After waking from a stupor in which he'd dreamed of the stately pleasure-domes of a Chinese emperor, he scribbled 'Kubla Khan'. Coleridge's addiction finally killed him in 1834. Thomas De Quincey, Laudanum His autobiographical account of his addiction to opium, Confessions of an English Opium Eater, published in 1821, brought him almost overnight fame. The book set the template for many writers who attempted to follow in De Quincey's druggy footsteps and found an even wider audience when Baudelaire published a French translation in 1860 called Les paradis artificiels. [continues 417 words]
Convicted drug users should not be sent to prison because it does more harm than good, a report from the influential UK Drug Policy Commission will say tomorrow. Up to 65,000 prisoners in England and Wales are thought to be problem drug users and, of these, two-thirds are convicted of less serious crimes such as shoplifting and burglary. The commission believes these offenders should not be jailed. Although the report accepts that almost a third of heroin and crack users arrested admit to committing an average of one crime a day, it says that community treatment programmes would be more effective than prison. [continues 147 words]
An international effort to target cocaine trafficking will begin today with the launch of a new intelligence centre to monitor South American drug smugglers crossing the Atlantic. Using Royal Navy warships and UK narcotics officers, the Lisbon-based Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre aims to intercept shipments before they reach Europe. During a six-month trial, officers have already seized almost 11 tonnes of cocaine. The centre, which combines the efforts of officers from seven European countries, was conceived following mounting concern over the continent's growing cocaine consumption. [continues 79 words]
The murders of five women in Suffolk, all of them addicts, have served to highlight Britain's growing heroin problem. Opiates have moved from being the preserve of the few to the drug of choice in towns across the UK They were offering Christmas specials on the south coast last week. Two wraps of heroin for the price of one. Buy a gram, get a hit of crack for free. Mike was unable to resist. Another year would soon pass with the 48-year-old from Hastings, Sussex, still enslaved to the 'brown'. [continues 1774 words]
Clifford Norris has never spoken publicly about the case in which his son was a prime suspect - the Stephen Lawrence murder. Now he breaks his silence on allegations of police corruption and tells of his own rapid descent from the gangland elite to jail and a life on benefits Mark Townsend, crime correspondent The Observer No one stopped to stare at the diminutive figure shuffling along Upper Denmark Road last week. Clifford Norris, one of the most notorious gangsters in Britain, now lives in a pokey bedsit in one of the rougher parts of Ashford, Kent, and no longer warrants a second look. [continues 2352 words]
New Report Shows Gangs Enjoy Easy Access To Guns And Judicial Corruption Organised crime in the UK is increasing rapidly, with firearms and drugs easily obtained by underworld syndicates which are also moving into child pornography to swell profits, a government report reveals tomorrow. The first analysis of the threat of criminal gangs to the UK by the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) adds that corruption remains a problem in the criminal justice system and that, far from reforming offenders, prison now forms the 'basis for many later criminal collaborations'. [continues 616 words]
A remarkable drugs project has transformed one of the regions worst affected by heroin addiction, it was revealed last week. Until recently, drug-related crimes made life a nightmare for people in the former pit villages of north Nottingham, with one in three families experiencing a fatal overdose, an addiction or a drug-related burglary. But these statistics have been reversed by a social experiment which suggests that Britain may finally have a solution in the fight against hard drug abuse. [continues 252 words]
As a Decision Looms on Reclassifying the Drug, Brian Paddick Says 'I Didn't Want It Downgraded' The senior police officer who was said to have inspired the government's controversial reclassification of cannabis has revealed for the first time that he has always opposed downgrading the drug. The then Home Secretary, David Blunkett, credited the liberal policing policies of Brian Paddick, now the Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, in the decision to reclassify cannabis. However, Paddick said that the Home Office never asked for his views on the issue and added that he has always believed the move was 'unnecessary' and would cause more damage than good. [continues 570 words]
Last Year Trucker Steven Toplass Took a One-Off Job in Spain. Soon After He Was Arrested for Cannabis Smuggling and Imprisoned. Now, 80 Other Cases Have Come to Light In retrospect, it was obvious that it was no ordinary pick-up. Steven Toplass was waiting in the Andalucian sun for his lorry to be returned from a depot where it was to be packed with electronic goods. Finally it arrived, the cargo packaged and sealed by men that Toplass had never met. He phoned his fiancee in Stoke-on-Trent and told her he was coming home. [continues 1240 words]
The failure of the government's policy to stem drug imports is revealed today by research which shows that Britain is awash with cheap drugs, with a line of cocaine now costing less than a cappuccino. The price of ecstasy, heroin, crack, cocaine and cannabis has tumbled to a record low in the last year, as dealers pumped ever greater quantities onto the market, encouraging hundreds of thousands of people to become regular users. The failure by customs and police to smash trafficking gangs and cut off supplies to the streets is an embarrassment for Tony Blair. [continues 685 words]
British Gas Forms Inquiry Team As Ukp100m Stolen Power Helps The Drug Spread Across Britain Nurturing a withered cannabis plant back to life once seemed almost compulsory for a generation of students. Now the size of the crop has changed. Startling new evidence reveals how vast plantations of marijuana are being cultivated throughout Britain among respectable suburban properties and the smartest family homes. Yet it is not the police that the army of illegal growers should fear: the gasman is now leading the crusade against cultivators of home-grown dope. Growing has become so widespread that energy companies calculate that up to UKP100 million of electricity is being stolen to grow the drug. [continues 590 words]
