- Drug traffickers are targeting middle-class Britons with
high-purity heroin that users prefer to smoke rather than inject, says
a new United Nations drug agency report.
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- Tailoring products to meet the sensitivities of those
British users who find injection repulsive will create a wider market for
the drug, warns the International Narcotics Control Board.
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- 'The illicit market operates in a very smart way, selling
a drug to a new class of users by telling them, "Use it in a different
way and you won't become addicted",' said Rainer Wolfgang Schmid,
a board member.
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- 'Middle-class users will not inject when they start taking
heroin, but when they become addicted, which they certainly will, they
will move on to injection and then the other problems kick in.'
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- The board, an independent UN body that monitors global
drug trafficking and use, said a flood of high-grade heroin from Afghanistan
to Britain, combined with the new marketing tactic, would boost the numbers
of those prepared to experiment with the drug.
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- 'Injection has become very unattractive to young people,
especially in Britain, because of its link to HIV,' said Dr Herbert Schaepe,
who is the board's secretary. 'Trafficking groups who want to continue
to make money are constantly looking for new illicit marketing strategies
to increase their profits, and this is one of their cleverest tricks yet,'
he added.
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- 'The heroin coming in from Afghanistan now is so pure
that smoking it will give users enough of a kick to get them hooked,' he
said. 'The dealers tell new users heroin isn't addictive if smoked, but
it's not true: heroin is heroin, however it's used.'
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- The board's annual report also warns that the price of
the drug is falling due to the increasing level of production in Afghanistan
of opium poppies, the raw material for heroin.
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- The UK has more than 270,000 heroin and crack cocaine
addicts, only 57,000 of them registered as users, according to the British
Crime Survey. 'This is a depressing indication of how weak a grip the Government
has on users and how little idea they have of the genuine scale of the
problem,' said a Home Office source.
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- Opium production had almost stopped in Afghanistan, the
main source of the UK's heroin, but since the Taliban were ousted from
power two years ago it has been higher than ever. Some 3,600 tons of opium
was produced in Afghanistan last year, 6 per cent more than in 2002. This
was nearly 80 per cent of world cultivation and was the source of three-quarters
of the heroin sold in Western Europe.
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- 'The distribution networks for heroin are sophisticated,
and the determination and ingenuity of dealers and local distributors should
not be underestimated,' said a spokeswoman for the National Criminal Intelligence
Service.
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- 'Although the service has so far no proof that the middle-
class market for heroin is increasing, we've seen with crack cocaine that
dealers will always look to exploit complex new markets and opportunities
to maximise their profits,' she added.
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- The Government reclassified cannabis to allow the police
to focus on serious drugs such as heroin, but the UN has warned that this
strategy could be undone if street prices for the drug fall as a result
of rising supply.
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- 'We're highly aware that traffickers constantly change
their marketing to get a toehold in new markets,' said a Home Office spokeswoman.
'This is a problem being faced by the United States and we are working
with them to tackle it together.'
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/drugs/Story/0,2763,1163998,00.html
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