Deaths of despair: how Britain became Europe’s drugs capital

If progress is ever made in the ‘war on drugs’, it will be thanks to people like Lorna Hughes. She runs a community centre in the Bell Foundry council estate in Loughborough. It was set up by residents appalled at how their neighbourhood had sunk into an underworld of drugs and crime. They wanted someone there keeping an eye out and helping those who needed it. One of the disused flats, a burnt-out drugs den, was converted into an office and the Marios Tinenti Centre was born.

I went to visit a few weeks ago and Lorna talked me through her job. If she sees anyone doing drugs, she calls the police. If thugs are menacing people on the estate, she helps the residents lodge antisocial behaviour orders. If an addict wants help, she liaises with charities. If anyone feels in danger, she’s there with a cup of tea and advice. She represents order, security and sympathy in a place badly in need of all three.

There are estates like the Bell Foundry all over Britain, riddled with drugs and crime, but few of them offer this kind of support. The need has never been greater. Drugs killed 5,900 people in Britain last year, the most ever recorded. Addiction is estimated to be behind half of all murders and thefts and a third of all prison sentences. Heroin and cocaine are being served in huge quantities by a sophisticated drugs industry whose ‘county lines’ distribution network employs some 27,000 children and makes an estimated £800 million annual profit.

This makes Britain’s drug dealers among the most successful in the world, relatively untouched by the half-hearted attempts by politicians to dislodge them. In a recent survey, half of drugs users said they could get cocaine delivered in 30 minutes — half the time it currently takes an ambulance to arrive.