Dying by the seaside, a generation of drug users

A ‘TRAINSPOTTING generation’ of hard drug users are dying in rundown seaside towns, an official report on the toll of heroin addiction said yesterday.

It found that seven of the ten places with the highest level of deaths from heroin are on the coast and include depressed resorts left behind decades ago by the age of holiday air travel.

The report pointed to evidence that impoverished seaside towns have sucked in ‘less economically active people’. And it said that most heroin deaths are among a ‘Trainspotting generation’ – named after the 1996 film about Scottish addicts – who are over 40 and started using drugs in the epidemic years of the 1980s and 90s.

‘Some of England and Wales’s favourite seaside resort areas are now among the towns with the highest rates of deaths from the misuse of heroin or morphine,’ the paper from the Office for National Statistics said.

‘Places that may have been more synonymous with family holidays are among ten areas that saw the highest rates of drug misuse fatalities where heroin or morphine were mentioned on the death certificate.’

The highest level of deaths linked to hard drug addiction in 2014 to 2016 was in Blackpool where the rate over the period was calculated at 14 deaths for every 100,000 people.

‘Blackpool’s fortunes have been in decline since traditional coastal holidays fell out of favour in the 1960s with the advent of package holidays abroad,’ the report said.

Other coastal places in the ten worst for drug deaths included Thanet, which includes the Kent resort of Margate. Only three of the ten – Burnley, Reading and Hyndburn, Lancashire – were inland.

The ONS report pointed to a study of depressed seaside resorts by independent think-tank the Centre for Social Justice which found in 2013 that ‘a recurring theme has been that of poverty attracting poverty’.

It said unemployment had bred low property prices which led to single-parent families and poor pensioners moving in, while public authorities had shifted children in care and former prisoners into the cheap housing. ‘Parts of these towns have become dumping grounds,’ the think-tank analysis said.

ONS figures last year showed that death rates from heroin and morphine were responsible for nearly seven out of ten drug deaths in 2016 compared to fewer than four out of ten in 1993.