SPECIAL REPORT: HOW THE SCOURGE OF DRUG ‘I GO – AN
A NTHONY THOMAS has been a drug addict since he started using as a teenager.
He’s 45 now and amphetamines have left him with no teeth. He had been living on the streets for five weeks when we met him in Llanelli. His hands were filthy and he admitted he smelled.
“I’m an addict, I’m addicted to amphetamines,” he said from under his blue checked hat.
“I started bothering with the wrong crew when I was 18 when I was learning to drive.
“I just wanted to drive and ended up driving my friends around when I was off my face.”
He had arrived in Llanelli from Neath to get help at the town’s Choose Life drop-in centre.
The town hit the headlines last month after Judge Geraint Walters claimed heroin use there was at “epidemic levels” when he jailed dealers Samuel Thorne, Philip Williams, Debbie Louise Wood, Darren Polverino and David Williams.
The judge said there was a “large group of people who are engaged in the use and distribution” of heroin in the town and that they were damaging the wider community.
Was the judge right? Is heroin use at “epidemic levels” in Llanelli? Is it a bigger problem there than in other Welsh towns of a similar size?
Anthony said: “There are worse towns than Llanelli for heroin.”
A quick Google search reveals scores of stories about Llanelli and drugs. But you’d get the same for any town that size.
In 2013 the custody suite at the town’s police station became the first to trial Naloxone – an antidote for opiates.
Some 17 people were arrested during Operation Panther last summer – the five jailed last month were caught as part of that.
During proceedings at Swansea Crown Court, Judge Walters heard undercover officers were asked by a man at Choose Life to drive him to a Burry Port flat.
The investigators gave him £30 for heroin and David Williams arrived 10 minutes later with drugs. Williams, of Station Road, Burry Port, was sentenced to 40 months in prison.
Choose Life was founded by exheroin addict Alan Andrews. Between the ages of 13 and 29 he spent his life in and out of detention centres.
He claimed the dealers locked up were “low level”.
“We do need to get drugs off the street, but those targeted by the police were low-level drug users and there were people caught up who were not even taking heroin but ended up going to score for undercover officers.
“That’s wrong. But in their world they were doing them a favour because the officers were pretending to be going cold turkey. Then they have gone to score and given it to the officer.
“I think they need to go to prison because you can’t do that – but they were still victims of drugs. We need to deal with the reasons why people take drugs. We need to stop being so judgemental in our attitude to drug users.”
Mr Andrews said many addicts – he claimed the figure was “99.9%” – had experienced “childhood sexual abuse, physical abuse, verbal abuse, neglect or divorce”.
“One girl I met, her opening line to me was ‘my grandfather is my father,’ he said.
“And that was the best part of her story. At the end of it I told her I could not blame her for taking drugs.
“When you’re addicted you’re a slave and a slave has to do what the master says. And if the slave does not there is punishment. That punishment with the