Last week an Islington woman died at the hands of her abusive partner. Two more women in the UK will die this week according to statistics, and with police nationwide receiving a call every minute begging for protection from partners, Jessica Salter investigates the dark world of domestic violence.
AT first it was nothing, just the odd rude comment. Then one day Amy's
boyfriend smashed her head into a shop window. But she did not think
she was a victim of domestic violence – he was just upset. Only after
a year of abuse of what was becoming a routine trip to A&E when a
nurse explained what was happening did Amy find the courage to leave.
Fiona has a similar story. Her husband raped her, and twice when she
fell pregnant his beatings were so severe that she miscarried. She hid
her bruises for five years until she ended up in her local hospital's
severe head injuries unit.
But Amy and Fiona are the lucky ones – they escaped. Last week an
Islington woman died at the hands of her abusive partner – two more
women in the UK will die this week according to statistics. Nationally
police receive one call a minute begging for help from domestic
violence, but this woman had never come to police attention.
Helen Williams, Inspector of community safety unit in Islington, says:
"By the time we come to hear about it, it can often be too late. We
estimate that victims experience about 35 incidents of abuse before
they report it to the police. So when they do finally report you know
there's been a build up."
Islington police received 3,365 complaints of domestic violence in
2004-5, mainly from women. In Britain women suffer 12.9 million acts
of abuse and men are the victims of 2.5 million incidents annually,
according to the British Crime Survey. The government estimate
domestic violence costs the UK £23 billion annually and Islington
alone almost £11 million in services.
Monica Tuohy from Islington's Women's Aid, which has operated in the
borough for 25 years, is part of Islington's domestic violence
awareness week. She says: "It's incredibly important that we tell
women that they're not alone."
Although Inspector Williams and Ms Tuohy both deal with cases of
domestic violence in Islington every day, amazingly they have never
before routinely shared information about the victims they help.
Now, for the first time, all Islington agencies involved in domestic
violence cases, including local services like education, housing and
social services, will share information so they can build up a borough
wide picture of the problem.
In two weeks time, Inspector Williams will chair the first
Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference (MARAC) on April 4. She says:
"For the first time we will have a clear picture of lifestyles and
violence that is happening but that each individual agencies might not
know.
"Part of the tragic circumstances surrounding the Victoria Climbie
case [when social services, doctors and police in Haringey were blamed
for missing persistent child abuse] was a lack of sharing information.
We've been determined to learn from that."
MARAC will meet fortnightly to decide action plans on the ten most
high-risk victims in the borough.
"The cases will keep coming back to conference until either the
partner is no more, the victim is in safe accommodation or we deem
that the victim's risk has been severely reduced," Inspector Williams
says.
Ms Tuohy has worked with domestic violence forums in different
boroughs. "Lots of these forums are very ineffective – they're just a
talking shop. Here in Islington we've taken a huge step forward, we're
not just talking, we're actually doing."
National initiative on domestic violence measure success by criminal
prosecutions, but domestic violence is notoriously underreported and
conviction rates are low. Last year Highbury Corner Magistrates Court
heard 151 cases of domestic violence, despite the police receiving
over 3,000 complaints, and only found 52 per cent of offenders guilty
- in part due to lack of evidence.
Inspector Williams said she hoped that the new system would mean
police could gather enough evidence to make more prosecutions. "We
hope that through MARAC we will be able to take more offenders to
court but for us, the real success is going to be if the victims take
back control of their lives."
Among the programme of events to raise awareness about domestic
violence is a performance of the Vagina Monologues, an art exhibition
and a workshop for women in the Somali community and on Monday, the
launch of the police's initiative third party reporting, where
neighbours and friends can step in and call the police on the victims
behalf.
Inspector Williams is confident that Islington's domestic violence
victims will benefit from these new initiatives. She says: "We're only
here to empower and support the survivors."
Tuesday, 27 March 2007
Sharing stories of abuse
Thursday, 22 March 2007
Driven into the darker places
By Rosie Stewart and Alice Wright
In a run down café in Camden, where the food is stale and the waitress serves with a sneer, sits Tracey, a local sex worker, preparing herself for a night’s work. She’s accompanied by Allison and Claire, two outreach workers based in the area.
Tracey is here to discuss the installation of a CCTV camera on Market Road in Islington. Funded by the Council, the camera is in place to drive out anti-social behavior and sex workers in an effort to “spruce up the area”. It will come into action at the end of March.
The Council claims the road is a hive of social activity, but the reality is a deserted drive-through between York Way and the Caledonian Road. A poorly lit park runs along the northern side and tennis courts occupy the south side. People seldom go there. Even the bus only passes once every half hour.
Sergeant Franc Francioni, head of the Holloway Safer Neighbourhood Team, says the camera is not there to target the women working in the area, but rather the punters who use them. “This is not about criminalizing the women, it’s about disrupting the trade.”
Sitting under harsh strip lighting, with a Lucky Strike in one hand and a can of Fanta in the other, Tracey, who has worked in the area for the past ten years, has other ideas: “From our side of the fence it's more like this: yes, sometimes it does make us feel safer, except for when they use it to hunt us with.”
When that is the case, she says, they are forced to take more risks. Punters don’t want their registration caught on camera so Tracey and her friends have to take them to places where they can’t be identified. Darker places where there are less people, where it isn’t safe. As Tracey puts it: “The kind of place an attacker would like.”
From talking to experts and the girls on the street, it is obvious that problems with CCTV systems arise when they are used to penalise sex-workers rather than protect them.
Geraldine Flanagan, National Information and participation officer at the UK Network of Sex Projects, says: “The CCTV camera is not the problem in itself, the concern is the attitudes behind the camera. If it is part of a heavy police enforcement programme then the worry is that it will disperse sex workers and force them to work in unsafe areas, making them more vulnerable.”
Tracey, sporting a baker-boy cap and pigtails, doesn’t disguise her fear. “I’m scared. I’m scared for me, I’m scared for my girls as well. We're family, we're a unit. When one of us gets murdered it hurts. This camera is in the wrong place - don't put them where things work, put them where they don't work. Put them by the canals. Even better, why don't we just make it cost effective all round and legalise it [prostitution].”
A few moments later, Tracey is joined by Linda. Suffering from deep vein thrombosis and painfully thin, she draws up a chair by the table. Linda explains that in her efforts to escape CCTV she ended up in Hendon last night. “The cameras make it uncomfortable for us, you don’t go where it’s safe, you don’t know the haunts. But I have to because I’m known around here.”
The CCTV cameras also come between the outreach project and the sex workers. New Horizons Youth Centre has been sending staff like Allison and Claire on to the streets since 1968. They target women working on the street, providing condoms, safety advice and access to a drop-in centre at their premises on Chalton Street. They claim CCTV has made their job harder as it is more difficult to find the women who need their help. Claire says: “It’s frustrating, because they’re still working, but we can’t find them. I don’t think the cameras are going to work. If something happens the police are not going to get there immediately, are they? It’s more of an observation thing.”
Despite assurances from the authorities that the cameras are there to catch kerb-crawlers, Tracey and Linda agree that it is they, rather than their clients, who are targeted. Tracey recalls many incidents with violent punters in which police have “put words into [the punter’s] mouth to help them walk away” - despite her obvious distress and bloodied face.
In between a sandwich and a cigarette Linda chips in with a story about a mutual friend: “Rachel got caught on camera and got an £80 fine on the spot. If she doesn’t pay that within a certain amount of time she’ll end up in jail. And the community police were giggling away telling me about it, saying ‘we had to come in today and watch Rachel for 25 minutes taking it up the bum’. And afterwards she peed on the street and she got an extra £20 for that.”
Allison asks what penalty the punter was given. “Nothing. How are they going to find him? They know her face. They just watch the film and then they hand her the fine.” And what does Linda think about this? “Don’t do nothing under the camera, don’t take the risk.”
There are no quick fix solutions to the issues surrounding the safety of sex workers. Throughout the interview Tracey talks movingly of a family she is determined to protect. As for the CCTV cameras, Tracey says: “You can always tell where you’re going when you look back and see what’s changed. Nothing. Nothing’s changed since my friends were found chopped up in bin bags and in dustbins and in canals in suitcases. These things touch our lives. They’re real. They happen to real people. And we’re not just statistics. This is how we manage.”
The names of the sex workers have been changed to protect their identities.
Tuesday, 20 March 2007
Online frontline
By Dave Green
Simon Kelner, editor of the Independent, reckons “no one listens to podcasts.”
The five men and women sitting silently behind their computer screens, cocooned by headphones, think differently.
Their faces twitch with the efforts of concentration as they race against the clock to finish their own podcasts by lunchtime.
The three medical professionals and two AIDS charity workers from Ghana are coming to the end of a two-day course in citizen journalism hosted by Islington-based On Road Media (ORM).
Founded in 2005 by Nathalie McDermott, a former producer for Radio Five Live, the social enterprise trains marginalised groups and charities to create podcasts and audio diaries, as well as websites upon which to host them.
Today it’s the turn of Owusu Kwasi-Poku, a representative of charity Theatre for a Change, which uses workshops and performance to investigate issues around HIV/AIDS and young people’s rights. Owusu has come all the way from Ghana to
drum up support for the charity and learn some new skills in the process.
He smiles as he puts the finishing touches to a sound graph he’s been tinkering with.
“We do projects with young people that try to promote awareness of health issues in Ghana and this is a great way to get the message across to a larger community. It’s been fun and should be very useful for our jobs”
In many ways ORM is at the forefront of the citizen journalism revolution that has forced so many changes in the way the so-called “old media” operates.
In America, hyper-local newspapers such as Chicago’s Chi Town Daily News, which relies on reporters based in the communities they write about, eschewing professional journalists in the process, are raking in readers as conventional newspapers lose sales.
This is what Nathalie sees as citizen journalism taken to its logical conclusion. “We’re supporting people with sustainable skills so they can do it themselves. And citizen journalism is that,” she says.
“It’s about people talking for themselves, not through the conduit of an impartial third-party journalist.”
Although the hyper-local news revolution is yet to hit Britain with any real gusto, projects like ORM are planting the seeds of the coming change by giving people the tools they need to report on the local issues that concern them.
Earlier this month, homeless charity Ten Feet Away, which runs out of the Union Chapel on Compton Street, launched a website created as a result of ORM’s training. [http://tenfeetaway.wordpress.com]
Billy Rippe, the project’s coordinator and formerly homeless on the streets of Islington, explains the idea behind the project. “We wanted to deliver an international website and thought it would be nice to add the voices of people all over the world. So we contacted ORM and arranged two days training in citizen journalism.”
Now, just a week after the launch, the website already has posts from similar groups in Japan and Argentina, with a forthcoming visit to Russia likely to add voices from another country to the stable.
The content is highly varied and of a high quality; so high in fact that in a few months the best pieces of art (audio and visual) posted on the website will feature in a Guardian Arts Unlimited online exhibition. Vodcasts supplement blogs, pictures supplement podcasts and the result is that reflections on homelessness, prison stints and art are all conveyed through multimedia in a way unthinkable a few years ago.
“We wanted to create a network of homeless charities so we can have a look at what’s going on in other countries and compare, say, homelessness in Islington and Buenos Aires,” says Billy.
The training is all conducted on open source software that is free to download, which enables the trainees to take the skills they have learned back to their communities and workplaces. Billy has taken this a step further and extended the reach of the training beyond the UK.
“Our international partners can blog anytime they want. We created a training package that we have on our website to support the international people so they can do podcasts as well.”
Ten Feet Away is exactly the kind of project that innovative radio slots like Radio Five Live’s Pods and Blogs are interested in. The show, hosted by Chris Valance, has been running since April 2005 and features content from citizen journalists, interviews with bloggers and reports on developments in new media at home and abroad.
Chris is anxious to see more citizen journalism on the show to supplement the hard hitting podcasts it has already broadcast on topics like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the 7/7 attacks on London and the reaction to the recent spate of shootings in Peckham, created by Radiopeckham.org.
Chris says “I do think that the media could do more to raise awareness of how empowering the new technology can be. Of course it's time consuming, costs money, and there are elements that are technically challenging, which is where groups like ORM can help people on the wrong side of the digital divide gain a voice. That kind of work is hugely valuable as is the content it creates.”
Chris is reluctant to say the show has broken any stories as most are featured on blogs before they reach him, yet his show has been the conduit through which some major stories have reached a wider audience.
“The story about the US army using white phosphorus for more than just illumination was first broken by a blogger called Insomnia, but he tipped us off to the story and we passed that on to colleagues covering the military.”
It’s unlikely that many of the groups trained by ORM, Index on Censorship and British Friends of the Hebrew University among them, are going to break a major international story, but this is not the point. Citizen journalism is changing the way the media operates across the globe. If Islington’s homeless are already on the web reporting, blogging, vlogging and podcasting, that change will surely know no bounds.
Monday, 19 March 2007
Rest in Green Peace
By Josh Spero
Just when you thought going green could spread no further, (having already rampaged into food, travel, work and play) it now turns up when you are least capable of dealing with it: in death.
If this seems like the last straw – can’t we be left to die in carbon-consuming peace? – do not worry, because help is close at hand. Indeed, luckily for those readers who care about the environment (and their pockets), Islington is at the centre of the latest leap forward in our green evolution, leaving your life as you lived it. The Natural Death Centre, based on a quiet street in Highbury called Blackstock Mews, is a charity that promotes the use of eco-friendly alternatives in funerals and burials.
It’s an area ripe for improvement. Just consider how wasteful funerals are: at least one tree has been sacrificed for the coffin; a hearse that inches along guzzles gas; and crematoria send up filthy smoke every day. They tend to be expensive, too. A Daily Mail article from January 2006 found that an average burial now costs £3,307, while a coffin alone could be £2,850.
If you are an Islington citizen and want to be buried in one of its cemeteries, it will cost you £450 just for the plot, plus £610 if you want to reserve it, and sundry other expenses. In December the council agreed to above-inflation rises on all of these charges, making dying ever dearer.
So a switch to green has environmental and economic sense on its side. Mike Jarvis, who works for the Natural Death Centre, says it is becoming clearer to people that they should consider green funerals.
“Now they’re starting to worry about how often they’re flying, it’s entirely ridiculous to suppose they won’t want to carry that attitude towards funeral provision,” he says.
The Centre, founded in 1994, owes its evangelical pro-environment attitude to its founder, Nicholas Albery. A social innovator, Mr. Albery initially wanted it to campaign for the sort of palliative care Macmillan nurses now provide, but its focus shifted towards the environment because of the fulfillment of its first aim and a change in public interest. When Mr. Albery, once the Green party’s candidate in Kensington and Chelsea and founder of an artists’ commune in Notting Hill, died in a car crash in 2001, he had a green funeral.
The Centre is convinced of a wide interest in its work and to this end has organised the London Green Funeral Exhibition. Taking place on Saturday 28th April in central London, the exhibition will feature panel discussions, talks and workshops about ecologically-positive burials.
Among the debits of a traditional funeral Mike also includes the “toxic sludge” of formaldehyde and arsenic, which seeps into the ground from embalmed bodies, the glues used in coffins and the lack of space in cemeteries. In fact, a Guardian piece from 2000 warned that inner London’s cemeteries would all be full in seven years’ time – today.
The Centre recommends several ways of keeping eco-harmony, including using one of the 200 cemeteries registered with the Association of Natural Burial Grounds (which it founded and administers). The association’s code of practice includes requirements for cemeteries to conserve their environment and to accept biodegradable coffins. Woodland Burials, a member of the association, has four separate ‘woodlands of remembrance’ in south England, and while site prices are slightly more expensive than at Islington’s municipal cemeteries, they do not have the council’s menu of additional services. Even a tree is included.
Cardboard coffins are a Centre favourite. If you are imagining flimsy little grey things that crumple in the rain, you’re wrong: now they are sturdy as anything and come in a variety of dazzling designs. ecocoffins.com offers one covered with autumn leaves, or another whose lid is a bright sky and sides are a field of poppies. They are also generally much cheaper than wood coffins; at peacefunerals.co.uk you can get them from £95. You need not just go with cardboard: bamboo coffins start at £259, willow ones at £400.
As if to make your decision even harder, if you do not want to be buried, you don’t have many green cremation options, as the smoke given off is harmful to the environment. Sherwood Forest Crematorium in Nottinghamshire is a positive exception, having recently installed filters to rid the smoke of dangerous heavy metal particles.
The Natural Death Centre’s campaign has not gone unnoticed. “I’m working with the Department of Constitutional Affairs on producing a booklet concerning guidelines for burial operators,” says Mike Jarvis. “We had this code of practice and the next thing I knew they were running up and down Westminster shouting, ‘This is the model of how it should be done!’”
There is a persuasive case to be made for going green post mortem. Even if you do not care about the environmental advantages, cost considerations could well sway you. Green ceremonies are also more unique, as you are opting out of the regular funeral conveyor belt.
Talk of green burials may initially seem a shocking intrusion into one of the few areas left untouched by environmental meddling, but it is really just the logical conclusion of a process many of us are currently involved in. When you consider that we now spend so much of our lives preventing pollution, there is no good reason why we should do the opposite in death.
Thursday, 15 March 2007
The day my daughter died
Jean Murphy tells Jes Salter of the day her world fell apart when her 15 year old daughter Kayleigh Macilwraith-Christie died after a series of ambulance blunders, leaving her without life-saving treatment.
Kayleigh had epilepsy since she was small. I was always scared for her – I sent her to a school where all the kids have some illness. We never went too far in case something happened. I had that fear in me but she never let it hold her back. She did a lot in her little life.
She was a lovely singer. She used to sing Whitney Houston to a T and that Titanic song, she was always singing that. I’ve got her on tape, larking about up in her room. It hurts when those songs come on the radio. But her favourite thing was volunteering at the adventure playground nearby helping kids, pushing them on the swings, drawing pictures for them - that kind of thing.
On July 14 last year she’d come in from the playground, gone to the toilet, grabbed me and said “Mum, I think I’m going”. She slid down me and started fitting in the hall. Her little body was jerking around my ankles – trying to fold up on itself - and I was trying to hold her under the arms. It was terrifying to watch. I had to shout for my partner Martin to help because she was heavy, just a dead weight.
I called for an ambulance at 6.50pm - I knew she needed an injection of diazepam. The station is within spitting distance of our house but after nine minutes I called again. At 7.05pm a medical technician arrived but he wasn’t qualified to give the drugs. He called the base again but their system was down. He kept phoning - he could see that I was in a panic. We were both standing there, we couldn’t do anything. He was in a state, poor man.
It turned out the ambulance had come across an accident and stopped, then the switchboard got the wrong switch and downgraded Kayleigh’s situation to a non-emergency. They didn’t even know which ambulances had a paramedic on board. I’d always thought paramedics were on all ambulances – now I’ve learnt they’re not.
About 7.30pm the technician sent me outside to see where the ambulance was. Even though it had sat nav, I saw them turn in the wrong estate and I had to run and get it. I was out there for about half an hour while my daughter was dying. At 8.30pm she died. I can’t play god and say she would’ve lived, but they definitely ruined her chances.
The cars the technicians go round in were actually issued for paramedics, so why are technicians in them? Why do they have to come out to assess the situation? I’d already assessed the situation. I speak English. He understood what I was saying. It’s disgusting.
My doctor says I’ve shut off half my brain to deal with the grief because I can’t cope with the full whack. I’ve developed this twitch in my eye and jaw when I think about her. I get panic attacks if I hear a siren, so I hardly go out. If I go down Holloway Road the sirens rebound all round you. It’s disorientating.
My friend Michelle came over to support me. I couldn’t cook for a long time. I couldn’t not dish up for Kayleigh. I know that sounds silly but I kept seeing her plate out on the side. I’ve thrown it out now. It’s only in the last few weeks I’ve started cooking again.
We used to go shopping together. Her wardrobe is stuffed full of clothes, all hung up and I iron them. I can’t bear to get rid of them. Eventually I’ll give them to a charity shop, but not one round here. I’ve crammed her room full of pictures and certificates but she wouldn’t like me messing with it.
She was never one for photographs. She had a brace and she’d always cover up her face or look away and in the end I gave up. Now I’ve put pictures everywhere you look. I’m scared I’ll forget what she looks like.
I was taught that if you’re not baptised you won’t get in the pearly gates so I had Kayleigh baptised, she was given her last rites and her ashes were blessed. I did everything just in case. You don’t know if it’s true, but I had to make sure. I want to believe there’s an afterlife – I can’t think that I’ll never talk to her again.
I had her cremated. We’d booked a holiday to Spain and she was looking forward to it. After she died my first thought was, “No I won’t go”. But then I thought, “She wanted to go, so I’ll take her”. I sprinkled some of her ashes in the sea so she could have her last swim. I sprinkled some over my mum’s grave and I’ve got some of her ashes here as well. She’s everywhere now.
Michelle helped me organise a petition to get trained paramedics on all ambulances. We collected 15,500 signatures and I delivered it to 10 Downing Street on November 24 - Kayleigh’s birthday. Tony Blair sent a letter back, but it wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. They’ll talk about Jade in the blooming House of Commons but this – zilch. It’s not mentioned.
People pretend they don’t see you – I make them feel uncomfortable I suppose, but it’s not like I’m going to talk about her all the time. I just want her to come home.
Dangerous new ‘legal ecstasy’ drug is a hit with clubbers
“I totally flipped out I was out of control. The world became so colourful and my body reverberated to every beat of the music.” Jonny, a 19-year-old Student from Caledonian Road has just come down from taking BZP a new ecstasy-like drug in Islington’s Turnmills superclub.
Jonny was lucky this time but next time he might have to cope with more than a “slightly sore head and aversion to light the next morning”. The drug, which was originally used to treat parasites in cattle, has already led to the death of at least one clubber and left another in a coma, and it has not undergone any scientific testing.
One thing Jonny doesn’t have to worry about is a visit from the police. Although BZP, aka Legal E, is only a few chemical bonds different from ecstasy, a class A drug, it is not classified as illegal in theUK. In the eyes of the law, taking BZP (Benzylpiperazine) is as innocuous as popping an asprin.
Jonny doesn't have to hang around street corners to buy BZP. He doesn't even need to go to the chemist. He can order online and have it delivered the next day by Royal Mail. One website, www.somethingforyourmind.co.uk, states on it's home page: “Looking for a legal alternative to ecstasy? Then look no further. You will find several legal ecstasy products that you can safely buy online.”
One of the pills for sale is Acceler8, which is described as a “legal speed alternative party pill...by far the best party pill we have found so far.” This pill which costs only £5.50 is a blend of BZP, TFMPP [a related drug] and guarana seed, along with Vitamins and minerals. The website, which does not ask its customers for proof of age, continues: “You really will not believe the strength of this legal speed pill, we feel this is the best legal high pill online!”
The legality and ease of obtaining this drug is thought to have led to a huge increase in demand over the last few years. In New Zealand, where the drug was first used by clubbers, a government survey found that 20 per cent of people had tried BZP. The BZP industry is worth £20m in New Zealand alone, and has made it’s ‘discoverer’ Matt Bowden a millionaire.
It's legal and big business, but whether it’s safe is another matter. Islington Now has discovered that Ben Rodden a 20 year-old DJ from New Zealand is currently in a coma after taking the drug. BZP also contributed to the death of a young woman in Switzerland, who died as a result of brain damage caused by Hyponatremia, also known as water intoxication, a condition caused by drinking too much water while high. Dehydration caused by the drug led her to drink more than 8 litres of water in 90 minutes, putting immense pressure on her brain. Leah Betts, a school girl from Essex notoriously died in exactly these circumstances after taking ecstasy just days after her 18th birthday in 1995. Her death led to new legislation to protect teenagers from the threat of ecstasy.
The dangers of BZP are becoming increasingly obvious to Paul Gee an accident and emergency doctor in New Zealand who said BZP-related emissions were almost unheard of a few years ago but are now commonplace. Between April and September 2005 his team at Christchurch Hospital studied admissions caused by the drug. Two clubbers suffered-life threatening toxicity and brain seizures, another fifteen suffered toxic brain seizures. Sixty-one other patients were admitted complaining of nausea, vomiting, anxiety and heart palpitations.
Worried by the threat posed by this drug, the United States government placed BZP on its schedule 1 rating, the highest possible rating which includes heroin. The drug is also illegal in Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Australia and Japan. Even the New Zealand government, which once hailed BZP as a great weapon in the fight against amphetamine addiction, is currently debating the drug's future as a controlled legal substance.
Why then is this dangerous drug legal in Britain? A Home Office spokesman told The Times that: “BZP is legal because it has never been classified as causing harm as no evidence as been shown to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs [the government body which decides on the legality and classification of all drugs]”.
Islington Now has discovered that the Turnmills superclub in Farringdon is doing nothing to protect clubbers from the new drug. Kevin, a Turnmills employee who refused to tell us his full name, said: “Who knows if anyone takes it in here? If it’s legal who cares? I’m from New Zealand and it’s a huge problem over there. But, I’ve taken it and I think it’s absolutely rubbish – it does nothing.”
This drug is so new to Britain that most drug charities are unaware of it, but Hope Uk said: “If the drug is similar to ecstasy then it should be made illegal at least until tests are carried out, prevention is better than cure”.
Phil Willis MP the Chair of the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee said the problem lies with how drugs are classified. “Most people out on the street believe that drugs are classified on the basis of the harm they cause, but they aren't they are classified by the criminality they cause” he said.
There has been no evidence that BZP has causes an increase in crime, as it does not lead to violence or antisocial behaviour. Neither is it very addictive or prohibitively expensive so the users does not have to commit crime to fund their habit.
Willis is campaigning for a change to the drug classification system so that drugs can be classified separately by the health damage they cause and the societal problems they cause.
“BZP gives the government the perfect chance to play new drugs with a straight bat. They should look into the harm they cause and give drug users proper information about these drugs. It is then up to the criminal justice system to decide how illegal the drug should be based on criminality.”
Until that happens clubbers like Jonny will continue to flock to BZP drawn by its legal status. Jonny said: “When my mates told me about a new legal drug that got you high and was fully legal I was doubtful, but then I thought if it's legal then it's got to be safe, hasn’t it?”