panorama.2019.03.04.these.pills.may.kill.you

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panorama.2019.03.04.these.pills.may.kill.you
Transcript
00:00This is a story of one community in crisis.
00:05It turned her into a monster.
00:07Of a generation addicted to and dying from prescription drugs.
00:12I've been near where a folk died in my house.
00:16It's a story of the changing face of substance abuse.
00:19This Xanax business, that's really quite new.
00:23And an unseen trade in deadly pills via the internet straight to your door.
00:28It's drugs like this that are killing people in Scotland.
00:30And that's how easy it is to get a hold of it via Facebook.
00:33It's incredible.
00:36Panorama takes you behind the UK's record number of drug deaths.
00:40To those trying to stem the tide.
00:42And to the lives of those left behind.
00:59She was just gorgeous and just bubbly.
01:02And she was the apple of everybody's eye in the family.
01:07She just danced the whole time.
01:09I think she was born.
01:19I think we had 16 years of Kimmy just pure innocence and growing up and blooming.
01:28And then it just seems to be like the only word I can say for it.
01:32It turned her into a monster.
01:41Sometimes she would come out and you could maybe tell she was on something.
01:46And we used to get our hats and coat on.
01:48We used to go up the field where I walk.
01:50And we'd walk for miles.
01:52And as I walked and walked and walked I could see she was coming back down.
01:57And then she'd come in and have a cup of tea and eat.
02:01Something to eat.
02:02And they should be fine.
02:04Is anyone you know affected by heroin addiction?
02:06Consistent with the rest of Scotland, drug deaths in Dumfries and Galloway are increasing.
02:11Which is why NHS Drug and Alcohol Service are holding several events where people can receive training
02:16on how to recognise signs of an overdose and other potentially life-saving benefits.
02:20Hashtag, let's stop the deaths now.
02:23Dumfries and Galloway isn't necessarily an area you would associate with drug use.
02:27It's largely rural.
02:29Parts of it are quite affluent.
02:31But in actual fact, it does have its problems.
02:34Just to give you a wee bit of context.
02:36In 2012, six people died here.
02:38In 2017, it was 22.
02:41So something is happening here.
02:44The number of people dying from drugs misuse in the UK has never been higher.
02:49Here in south-west Scotland, drugs like heroin were killing people.
02:53Now they're combined with a cocktail of prescription pills.
02:59That's John Paul when he started school.
03:03When he was five.
03:06That's Joseph when he started school.
03:10That's Christopher.
03:12Why did you move down here?
03:14To move to get a better life.
03:16To get away from the city and away from the drugs and that.
03:20The drug use.
03:22But I soon found out wrong.
03:24I knew he was taking a vast amount.
03:28But I didn't know exactly how many.
03:32I just knew he was taking a vast amount.
03:37I just knew he was taking a vast amount of drugs.
03:42I kept telling him to stop it.
03:45To slow down.
03:49But he wouldn't listen.
03:53For years, John Paul was taking a catalogue of prescription drugs.
03:57Most of them bought illegally.
04:00One of his brothers, Christopher, found him the night he died.
04:05I'm right in his room with the light on.
04:07Something's not right.
04:09I've dropped my phone.
04:11I've slapped him.
04:12I've got no response.
04:14I've phoned 999.
04:16They told me to get him out of bed on the floor.
04:19And start pumping his chest until the ambulance arrived.
04:22I knew in my heart that he was gone.
04:26So I need to be strong for my wee brother and my mum.
04:35Both Christopher and Joseph have been heavy pill users,
04:39including street Valium.
04:41Do you want to stop? Can you stop?
04:44No.
04:46It's too far gone.
04:48I've been taking them for...
04:50I was 14, 15 years old.
04:52I'm now 45.
04:54I hate taking drugs.
04:56Then can't I enjoy waiting on my own?
05:01We'd advise people not to touch them.
05:04There's no worth it.
05:06John Paul was 36.
05:08A year on, the bedroom where he died remains virtually untouched.
05:17He was killed by a combination of powerful drugs.
05:20The painkiller drugs were the only way to save his life.
05:24He was in hospital for a week.
05:27The combination of powerful drugs,
05:29the painkiller dihydrocodine,
05:31the heroin substitute methadone
05:33and the Tizolam, also known as fake Valium,
05:36a drug linked to nearly 300 deaths across Scotland in 2017.
05:41It's these kinds of cocktails that are killing record numbers in the area.
05:46I'm Justin Murray. I'm the service manager for the NHS Addiction Service.
05:51You would describe it as polysubstance use now,
05:54and there's more than one substance use.
05:56That's the big difference, I would say, from five years in to this point.
06:01The drugs that they're accessing are different drugs as well.
06:04Predominantly before it would have been IV heroin use,
06:06smoked heroin use we would have seen.
06:08But now we're seeing a lot more pill taking and things like that.
06:12That's fuelled mainly by the increased use of the internet.
06:17The internet, we would say, would be a game changer
06:19in that people are accessing drugs differently now.
06:22They're accessing a wider variety of drugs.
06:25They've got different quantities.
06:26They've got different qualities of those drugs.
06:28People are using more risky behaviours.
06:31That's the biggest change that we've seen in the last 45 years.
06:34How does it affect you at a personal level?
06:36It's in your community. It's right there in your face.
06:39The one thing that we are going against is the moral baggage in Scotland
06:43around drug deaths.
06:44Who really cares if a drug user dies?
06:46You may feel that about that individual,
06:48but that individual is a son, is a daughter, is a father.
06:53Other people are affected.
06:54So there's this big ripple effect when a drug death happens.
06:56So though we might say there's been 10 drug deaths recently here,
06:59you think of the amount of people that those 10 deaths have affected.
07:11She met her boyfriend, Kimberley,
07:15and they had a child together, which was Kelsey.
07:20There was a lot of drug taking and misuse.
07:23Unfortunately, Kim's boyfriend died in her flat
07:29due to the drug use and misuse that was going on.
07:32Kelsey knew more about what was going on.
07:37She was very mixed up.
07:40We're hoping now that she's still the 13th teenager.
07:43She's grew up a lot more now.
07:46Kelsey is the one who remembers the most.
07:50Oh, I bet that's cold!
07:54No!
07:56There was times in Kim's life when things were really good
08:00and she would clean up and get dry,
08:03but it would always be there.
08:07She would liven up, you know,
08:11go back to looking after her hair and her nails
08:14and just being that girl again.
08:17And then you'd get the dip.
08:20Then that's when you would notice that it would come round, you know.
08:24So...
08:26That was the big change.
08:28You had incidents where...
08:31who were very violent to me.
08:33When I was in my car one day,
08:35she wanted to meet me in the town
08:38and she wanted money.
08:40And I said to her, I said,
08:42Kim, I'm not giving you money.
08:44I'll get you something to eat, get you some food.
08:47But, no, I didn't approve at the time of getting her money.
08:51And my car window was open
08:54and she violently attacked me
08:56and ripped my hair out of my head
08:59and punched me and kicked me and...
09:02I just... I couldn't... I was so shocked
09:05that that was my own child doing that.
09:07And I just didn't recognise her.
09:13In Dumfries, we met Vanessa.
09:16She's spent nearly half her life hooked on one drug or another.
09:20See the bulls you're driving, eh?
09:23Oh, I've been a hair-on user for years,
09:26from the age of about 20, 22, 23.
09:30So my life's basically been prison, hair-on, prison, hair-on.
09:36Never had a job.
09:38Prison, hair-on, prison, hair-on.
09:41Never had a job, never worked.
09:43Did nothing.
09:45Basically wasted my life.
09:47Do you feel like you've wasted your life?
09:49I've totally wasted my life.
09:51Oh, I've been off hair-on for about a year and a half now.
09:54But I was taking a few street tablets, like pre-gablin,
09:58but not as much now
10:01because the death rates went right through the roof.
10:04The pre-gablin and the Valium and the Xanax.
10:07See, that's more the era now.
10:09That's what it is. It's not the hair-on.
10:12It's more tablets.
10:14So are you seeing people that you know?
10:16Aye, I'm seeing people dying through them.
10:19I've been there where folks died in my house.
10:23So it's horrible.
10:25It is replacing hair-on,
10:27maybe because of the cheapness or probably the better done.
10:31For me, it's a better done
10:34because the hair-on nowadays, it's nothing.
10:37You don't get a done with it.
10:39Well, I certainly don't get a done with it.
10:41I wouldn't waste a tenner on it.
10:43No.
10:44I would rather have a couple of tablets, as I said,
10:47but nowadays, as I'm seeing, it's getting more deaths,
10:50and I'm thinking, oh, it's about time you stopped now, Vanessa,
10:53because there's far too many folk dying.
10:55And as I say, you don't know what's around the corner.
10:58So I'm 39.
11:00I nearly did.
11:06Right, I'll see you later, mate.
11:10The pills Vanessa's taking aren't supposed to be bought and sold in the street.
11:14Most of them are prescription drugs, quite safe and legal,
11:18if taken as meant.
11:20But here it's their abuse and mixing with other drugs that is killing people.
11:25We've got dihydrocodine, which is a moderate painkiller.
11:30We've also got diazepam,
11:32which is taken for anxiety and muscle relaxant.
11:37We've got pregabalin here and gabapentin.
11:40Now, these are going to change in the way they are scheduled,
11:45and in April next year, they're going to be classed as a controlled drug.
11:49And this is because they've been subject to abuse.
11:53I mean, they're normally prescribed for epilepsy and also neuropathic pain.
11:59What happens is they'll take them,
12:02rather than take them like maybe one twice a day, one three times a day,
12:05as they're prescribed, they'll probably take half a dozen, ten at a time.
12:09And it sort of gives them the feeling of, you know, relaxing them and things like that.
12:15But that, on top of taking other medication, can obviously cause problems.
12:20What would happen is if they were taking, say, an opiate like methadone or heroin,
12:25and then they took the pregabalin on top,
12:28their breathing would get a little shallower,
12:31and then they'd actually just stop breathing.
12:37When you die with drugs in your system,
12:39a group of experts gets together to work out the exact cause.
12:43In December, this review group in Dumfries and Galloway
12:46met to discuss recent deaths in the area.
12:50We're starting to see a big increase in glycococaine and tablet sort of form medication.
12:56They're still obviously getting involved in the opiate abuse.
12:59Just now they're in there discussing seven different deaths
13:02that have taken place in Dumfries and Galloway in the last three months.
13:06All of them suspected drug deaths.
13:09Because there's confidential information, we're not allowed to sit in on that.
13:13They've been in there for just over two hours.
13:16It's confirmed all seven were killed by drugs.
13:19The commonest drug that we see, or type of drug that we see,
13:23leading to death is an opiate.
13:25It's heroin or sometimes morphine.
13:28And that again was the case.
13:30We saw that with a lot of the cases we discussed this afternoon.
13:33Another drug that really this meeting is the first time I've seen so many cases,
13:38but it's the drug Xanax, which is often talked about.
13:43That's a benzodiazepine, a special kind of sedative drug.
13:48It's not available in the NHS in the UK.
13:51It can't be prescribed by doctors here.
13:54It is available in places like the United States,
13:58and we are seeing quite a bit of it in Dumfries and Galloway,
14:02and it's obviously being sourced somehow in the black market,
14:06possibly via the dark web.
14:08This Xanax business, that's really quite new.
14:11We haven't seen that in Dumfries and Galloway before.
14:14I think I can remember maybe one or two deaths ever previously that involved Xanax,
14:20whereas from today we really saw a lot, a lot more than just two.
14:39I shouldn't have had to bury my son.
14:42He should have buried me.
14:44The words of a distraught Dumfries father as he issues a warning.
14:49There's still a lot of shame around drugs.
14:52This father wanted to talk to us, but didn't want to identify himself or his son.
14:57I'm looking at an article that I wrote into the Dumfries Courier.
15:03I wrote into the Dumfries Courier.
15:06I just hoped that if my article could save one life,
15:09that my son's death won't be in vain.
15:12I was woken up by a knock on my door at 4am by the police,
15:18who brought me the news that my son had died of an overdose.
15:22He was a drug user.
15:24He was on methadone, and he mixed it with Xanax, a most lethal combination.
15:30Mixing drugs is like playing Russian roulette with your life.
15:35My son is gone now,
15:37but I want to tell this story to warn others of the dangers.
15:41I don't want what happened to my son to happen to anyone else.
15:46How do you feel reading that article back?
15:49Erm, distressed, upset.
15:53I mean, nothing can bring my son back.
15:57It's, erm...
15:59It's the emptiness and the loneliness and the pain.
16:04Parents are here to protect their children,
16:08but we cannae protect them against this.
16:18I had tried to call her on the Thursday, and I couldn't get an answer.
16:23Anyway, nobody had seen or heard from her,
16:26so I spoke with family, and I said,
16:28look, I'm going to get up tomorrow morning,
16:30and I'm going to get up tomorrow, and I'm going to go and see...
16:34But I think by the Friday night, I sort of knew.
16:39And I thought to myself, I think she's lying in that flat.
16:43Years ago, when we were younger,
16:45only two policemen come to tell you when somebody's dead.
16:48So I just saw the lady coming herself, the policewoman,
16:51and she stopped out there, and I went to the gate.
16:54I said, well, she's obviously OK then, because in her two years...
16:58And she went,
17:00I'm really sorry.
17:02I just...
17:04I just knew.
17:06Just...
17:08Cried.
17:10Burst out crying.
17:12Like, shouting.
17:14Angry.
17:17Devastated.
17:21Totally devastated.
17:23I was talking to her a couple of nights before,
17:26and she kissed me, and she said, I love you.
17:28Mum.
17:30And she went into the flat, and I told her,
17:32you know, we're here.
17:34We're just a mile away.
17:36We're always here at the end of the phone.
17:41It was the last time she spoke.
17:53MUSIC PLAYS
18:11So one of the things that we noticed
18:13when we were looking at the drug-related deaths
18:16in Dumfries and Galloway over the last couple of years
18:19is the social connections between a lot of the people.
18:22A lot of them moved in the same circles,
18:24and they all knew each other,
18:26even through social media.
18:28So we're looking at this particular chap.
18:30He's died in early 2018 from a drug overdose.
18:33We know that.
18:35But then when you go to look through his friends,
18:38just look at it here.
18:40This guy here has died.
18:43She's dead.
18:45His brother's dead.
18:47He's dead.
18:49Guy in the picture's dead.
18:51This guy here's dead.
18:53These two guys next to each other, they're both dead.
18:58I mean, all of them have died in the last couple of years
19:02after taking a combination of heroin or methadone and the pills.
19:07But when you see them all clustered together like that,
19:11it's quite stark.
19:20First Space in Dumfries is a support centre
19:23at the front line of this growing crisis.
19:26For 15 years, its volunteers have witnessed both the change
19:29in how drugs are being abused
19:31and the devastating impact on the community.
19:35When we first opened, we would see,
19:38I could say literally every day,
19:41someone coming through the doors at 18, 19, 20 years old
19:45who was newly using heroin,
19:48just discovering the fact that they'd become dependent on it,
19:51that if they didn't get it, they were going to rattle.
19:54That was just the norm.
19:56Now, I can't remember the last time that happened.
19:59The most common one we now see is Valium,
20:02and it's not a drug of choice, it's a drug of price.
20:06Valium tends to be on sale for 50p a pill,
20:09widely on sale for 50p a pill.
20:12So quite often we'll see people who are on a mix of methadone,
20:16which is free, care of the NHS,
20:19alcohol, the cheapest they can buy,
20:21and Valium because it's cheap.
20:23And so the people with drug problems,
20:27and we still see plenty,
20:29are kind of invariably between the ages of 30 and 60,
20:33and they're the ones who were 18, 19
20:36when we first met them back in 2003.
20:39Many of the same people, and sadly many of them
20:42are not going to walk through the door any more because they've gone,
20:45they've died as a result of those drug problems.
20:48How many of the people that you've dealt with over the years have passed away?
20:52It would be well over 100.
20:54It is extraordinary that, you know, you've lost so many people,
20:58and yet it's kind of almost gone unnoticed.
21:01I came to First Base in about 2008.
21:04I started volunteering in the veterans' garden.
21:07I was hooked on methadone, Valium, and cannabis at the time.
21:12And I just, the area I stay, I stay in Annan,
21:16which is even weirder than Dumfries,
21:19with just as big a drug problem.
21:21I just decided enough was enough.
21:23I went and got clean.
21:25Back in the day, when I first started,
21:27you'd have to roam the streets for maybe a couple of hours
21:30before you'd find what you were looking for.
21:33Don't now.
21:35Going to Instagram, going to Facebook, going to WhatsApp.
21:39Two minutes, I'm sorted.
21:42Two minutes.
21:44And maybe only a 20 minutes later, it's delivered to me.
21:48It's too simple now.
21:51There's a chap here called Benzo King,
21:54who is, I presume, selling benzodiazepines.
21:58There's a chap on here who's posted pictures of his last batch,
22:03which was on the 15th of September, 2018.
22:06There's also a man on here called,
22:09well, I'm not sure what his name is,
22:11but there's a chap on here
22:13who's posted pictures of his last batch,
22:16which was on the 15th of September, 2018.
22:19There's also a man on here called Diaz, a man.
22:23He's based in London and he's posted a batch
22:26which was on the 2nd of November.
22:29All in plain sight.
22:31I can't...
22:33I can't believe that it's actually so blatant on social media like that.
22:45Is it really that easy?
22:48We found hundreds of accounts on Facebook openly advertising pills
22:52from Diazepam and Pregabalin to Xanax.
23:10We made contact and 36 hours later, a delivery arrived.
23:17So we're just on our way to pick up a package
23:20that's been sent to us by one of the dealers
23:23that we've been in contact with.
23:41We contacted a guy on Facebook we'd never met
23:45and asked him to send us Xanax.
23:48Within 25 minutes, he agreed to send it.
23:50A day and a half later, it's in my hand.
23:53It's drugs like this that are killing people in Scotland
23:56and that's how easy it is to get a hold of it via Facebook.
24:06That's incredible.
24:09Our dealer said he was 100% legit
24:12but the same can't be said for his drugs.
24:15We had them tested.
24:17The pills were branded as Xanax but they were fake.
24:20They were actually the tranquilliser Atizolam.
24:23More than 900 people were killed by drugs in Scotland in 2017.
24:27Nearly a third of them had taken Atizolam
24:30including John Paul and Sankar.
24:33Atizolam is prescribed in Japan but not in the UK.
24:37It's a controlled drug.
24:39Benzodiazepines in general, they're all respiratory depressants
24:42so they act on the central nervous system
24:46and slow down your breathing
24:49so you don't have as much oxygen get into your brain.
24:53It's a controlled drug.
24:55It's a controlled drug.
24:57It's a controlled drug.
24:59So you don't have as much oxygen get into your brain.
25:02The problem is that there's a lot of respiratory depressants out there
25:07like heroin and methadone, alcohol when taken to excess.
25:13These are all respiratory depressants
25:15and they can all act together on the central nervous system
25:19and have devastating effects.
25:29So we contacted Facebook and asked them to come on this programme for an interview.
25:34They've said no, but they've given us a statement.
25:38After a thorough review, we identified and removed 11 accounts related to the content
25:42the BBC brought to our attention and fanned out to remove an additional 16 accounts associated
25:47with these profiles involved in similar activity.
25:50So that's 27 accounts?
25:54We found more than 200.
26:00Facebook says there is more it can do.
26:03If the trade of drugs on social media sites is so blatant, so easy, if deadly pills can
26:10be sent straight through the post, then what can the police do about that?
26:16In recent months we've probably taken out several thousand tablets which we suspect
26:22are Xanax.
26:23When we took them out of the postal system, I think we'd be naive to think that the availability
26:31of drugs isn't going to increase with the advent of the internet, and it's been slowly
26:35increasing over the years.
26:37I'm very conscious that enforcement alone isn't really going to solve the problem.
26:41We've been doing that for years and years, and it is an important part of dealing with
26:46the drugs.
26:47But there's a bigger picture, you know.
26:48The unfortunate reality is that we're never going to prevent all drugs deaths.
26:53We need to try our best to reduce them as much as we can, but again, it would be naive
26:58to think we're going to eliminate it completely.
27:03Why are you doing this today?
27:05I would just like if it helped any one family or person or young person that's got children
27:13and this is in this life, to think about what it does on the bigger scale of it all.
27:23I mean, no happy ending ever comes with a drug story.
27:30It always ends up sad.
27:34These children have lost everything through drugs, everything, and just going through
27:42it is just your worst nightmare for a mother, a father, sister, brother, grandparents, it's
27:49just your worst nightmare.
27:52And it's a waste, a waste of life, and it's no life.
28:01Last year, the UK recorded over four and a half thousand drug deaths, more than ever
28:05before.
28:10Yet the drug trade carries on, taking lives with ever greater ease.
28:16This is just one community, just one set of stories, yet today we are more connected than
28:22ever before, and the way we consume drugs is changing.
28:27This isn't some faraway place.
28:29This is probably your town.