Manchester: Heroin Haters Drugs Map of Britain

No matter where you go, you're always going to see smackheads.

Rob off their own fucking nans.

The stigma runs right across society,

even into the recovery community.

Another one there.

If I had carried on, I would have found hundreds.

I got pretty much one of these in every room.

People take the law into their own hands. It's just part of life.

-Is it, though?

-For me, yeah.

LAUGHTER

It's Saturday night in Manchester,

and I'm on my way to meet a group of men

who say they have had enough of heroin users in their area.

And they want to tell me exactly what they are doing about it.

Apparently, their actions are so extreme

that they're breaking the law...

..and they are very, very cautious not to have their faces shown.

What's it like, living round here?

A dive.

It is - it's full of smackheads,

there's no jobs, there is nothing for people to do.

Do you think, from what you guys see,

is heroin use in this area on the increase or decrease?

Increase, definitely.

You can see them doing it in the streets when you are walking past.

They come out and leave needles everywhere.

Once they come up, they're just, fucking...just...

"Eurgh, eurgh..." and that's it, they're off.

Then it becomes your responsibility to try and clean them up.

And did you ever report any of this to the council or the authorities,

to clean them up?

Yeah, but they don't do...

All they tell you to do is put it in a container

and take it to your local pharmacy, where they can dispose of it.

The council won't come out just to move one needle.

They'd not come out if you found a bunch of needles here on the floor.

I don't want my kid growing up around that shit.

Councils state they will pick up any reported needles within the day,

but these men say they have grown so sick of the ongoing situation,

they decided to sort it out themselves.

But you guys don't just clean up the needles, do you?

You clean up the users, too.

-Yeah.

-If we need to use violence, we'll use violence.

Simple as that.

Kick the fuck out of them.

Learn them a lesson, and more often than not, they won't come back.

But is that not an extremely violent way to go about it?

Doesn't matter, it is the only way you can get rid of them.

None of them will ever ring the police, though.

They're drug dealers, they take drugs.

They defend their violence

by telling me it's all to protect their turf.

So, in some ways,

do you guys just see yourselves as extreme neighbourhood watch?

-Yeah, definitely.

-Pretty much, yes.

We live on the streets,

so we want it to be a nice place to live for our children.

And do you guys use drugs yourselves?

I smoke weed.

You smoke weed. What about you guys?

-I take coke.

-You take coke?

I do as well.

Do you see it as being a bit hypocritical?

No, not really.

Because heroin and cocaine

are completely and utter different drugs.

They will have to go and rob people and businesses to feed their habit,

we can afford to pay to buy a little gram here and there at the weekend.

I'm introduced to other members of their group...

..and it becomes obvious that some of them

aren't just using drugs recreationally.

These two are quick to boast about their business dealing coke.

How much money do you reckon you can make a day?

Pfft... Varies, from £100-£300, to anything - depends on the day.

It is not addictive, it's just fucking...

-It's the money that's addictive.

-Yeah, yeah, it's the dough.

Do you want to get away from it?

Yes, of course I do. I've got a family and that -

but at the minute, it's money and it's where I am at.

It's living the life that I am living.

But not forever, not forever.

They also share the same views on heroin users

and reveal some shocking violent behaviour against the addicts.

We've had run-ins where we had needles found,

so we've fucking been and seen them, give them a good hiding,

stabbed them a few times with their own needles,

the dirty little bastards.

Why did you stab them with their needles?

Because they were throwing it over people's back gardens,

that have got kids that play in the back gardens and things.

It is not acceptable, is it?

But yet, you sell sniff.

Yeah, I know, but you don't get people throwing sniff

over someone's back garden, because they are not that stupid,

it costs too much.

They'd rather sniff it themself.

Do you know what I mean?

Start throwing sniff over someone's back garden,

I'll shake their fucking hand.

But you haven't got a problem with sniff?

No, have I fuck.

Have you ever seen sniff users become crack users?

Yeah, once or twice.

And then what happens when they become crack users?

-Crackheads, aren't they?!

-HE LAUGHS

Fuckin' hell.

In their world, there is a definite drug hierarchy

that puts coke users at the top and heroin users right at the bottom.

It also allows them to justify their illegal actions.

This morning, I'm going to go and meet with one of the lads

and take him up on his offer of looking at some of the problem areas

where we might find some needles.

I mean, generally, what's this land used for?

Now it's just wasteland until they develop it.

A lot of people use it for walking their dogs and stuff.

But again, at night-time, you have got the smackheads.

So what have you got there?

-Wow.

-That is a new one, that, that's recent.

Just bending that over so my dog doesn't...

or any other dogs don't get stabbed by it.

Do kids play up here?

Yeah, quite a few kids play up here.

They mainly play on the hill,

because we try and stop them coming round here.

He tells me that heroin users often camp out in this field,

and when the group find them, they want them out immediately.

We come over to them and say,

"Get off the field, you've got ten minutes to go,

"or we're coming back."

We come back ten minutes later and they were still here,

so we just battered them and sent them on their way.

Do you think it's necessary, that level of violence?

If you had kids,

would you like them to see someone digging smack in front of them?

This is a place we set on fire, again, if you look here -

there's hundreds of them around here.

More here, look, needles out on show.

You burnt them out of here?

Yeah, got a load of flammable liquid and set it all on fire.

One of me friends filmed it.

Right, so that is right here.

Yeah, and then the flame, there, we set it on fire.

'No more smackheads.'

-What did you say then?

-We said, "No more smackheads."

I just moved a bit of that, then,

and could have stabbed myself on that.

-Another one there.

-Oh, yeah.

We have probably collected about 30

in the time we have had a quick walk around the field.

If I had carried on searching through all that,

I would have had hundreds.

I don't want to be holding them, to be honest.

What I'll do, I'll put them all in this shoe

and put them in the fire later.

The quantity of needles

do point to a vast number of addicts in the area,

and I wonder if he has ever thought about or tried to understand

the situation of the people who leave them behind.

If someone is suffering with an addiction,

what are your thoughts on that?

Do you feel empathy for them? Do you feel sympathy?

I don't feel sorry for smackheads, cos it's their own choice,

it is their own choice in life.

They choose to inject themselves with this.

But do you think, perhaps, life can...

..bring it upon you, you lose opportunities,

anyone can become a heroin addict?

No matter how hard life gets, I would never turn to this.

Do you know anyone who has become a heroin addict?

No.

And if any of my mates started on heroin and smacking up,

then they would just have the bloody shit kicked out of them.

Cos it's disgusting, it is disgusting, I don't associate...

I don't associate with smackheads and stuff like that.

Even if your own father became a heroin addict?

If my dad became a heroin addict, I would stab him.

No two ways about that.

It is a zero tolerance approach.

One which he adopts at home as well.

He seems to have reason to worry about violent break-ins

and he shows me an arsenal of weapons he keeps to defend himself.

I've got pretty much one of these in every room.

That's quite a collection.

I've got some more in there.

-You've got some more?

-Yeah.

You've got a knuckle-duster thing there...

I will stash them in the corner of the room like that,

downstairs, upstairs, whatever.

If I hear someone coming through my front door, just run down,

grab that and go down with it.

So people having weapons in their house has become the norm for you?

I've always seen it.

I never seen it when I was at home,

but at mates' houses with shotguns and all that sort of stuff,

hid in corners and people taking the law into their own hands, you know.

I think it's a very lack of faith in the police, just part of life.

-Is it, though?

-For me, yeah.

-Wow.

-I'll show you that one.

However they justify it though,

he's part of a violent group who target heroin users.

People already criminalised and stigmatised by their addiction.

There are just under 300,000 heroin and crack cocaine users in England

and those aged 40 and above now make up the largest number of addicts.

At a soup kitchen, I meet 47-year-old Darren.

He tells me he had been using heroin for 24 years

and was recently assaulted.

I understand you got attacked?

-Yeah.

-And what happened?

What's happened, when I'd been stood on the front of this pub,

he'd seen somebody come out to me and then he's come running over.

Oh, my goodness, so right in your lungs, there.

Yeah, it's punctured me lung and me liver,

I was in hospital for five days.

He knows that I probably won't report it.

-Why, though?

-Because it's...

I'm using drugs.

I don't want to... Do you know what I mean?

..be blowing it up because he tried to attack me.

Tell me a bit about the stigma over the years.

It weren't so much then, because it was all shush.

But as it has progressed, it's more and more on the scene now,

the last ten, 12, 15 years.

It is horrible, walking down the street

and you get young kids saying, "Smackhead," you know.

It makes you feel like that, you know what I mean?

I just put my hood up and carry on walking.

Not all people, or what they call junkies,

go out and drop needles in the street.

People have got consciences, do you know what I mean?

People will do things right.

Once you've seen one person do it, they label everybody the same.

The majority of people who inject heroin are good people, you know.

The point is, you get dragged down because you're taking drugs

and you have to do stupid things to get them.

They don't really have a clue what's going on in my life.

It's a hard life.

Pete, an ex-heroin user,

knows too well the hardships of being an addict,

and recently set up a support group

to help people reintegrate into society.

He introduces me to Steve,

who is currently in treatment for addiction.

Why do you think society has this view of heroin users?

I'll tell you why, cos you take a few case studies,

a few of the darkest examples, and hold that up

as a means to frighten people away from it.

Drug addicts stigmatise other drug addicts,

so I've come into contact with people who say,

"I am addicted to cocaine, but I'm not addicted to heroin."

So it's like, even within addictions,

heroin is right at the bottom, so...

..the stigma runs right across society,

even into the recovery community.

It is because society sees... associates heroin with needles.

I mean, how tough is it, if you are in the state of addiction,

are you responsible to pick up your needles?

Or is there a bigger issue here?

A bigger issue. That's a minority, again.

Most of the places that you will see...

And it's not right, to have used needles near kids' parks

and blah, blah, blah.

But the majority of that will be, and I'm not stigmatising...

homeless people, but they haven't got a roof over their heads

to go and use their opiates.

Do you think that heroin users have reported

crimes that have happened to them?

Heroin users, just by using the drug, it's a criminal act.

Society doesn't listen to them anyway,

so why would a police officer?

In all my time being with an addiction,

I've never seen anybody that has been...

had a crime committed against them go and report it.

So it's really no surprise that

the anonymous group I met earlier remain unpunished.

So the lads I've met with are pretty extreme,

it's obvious they have very extreme views, I think,

a lot more than society,

but I do think society holds a grudge against the heroin user.

Now, the lads clearly have such issues,

I think it's gone beyond that.

They've created their own nightmares of what a heroin user is.

Protecting their community, I think, is an excuse.

I return to a party back at one of the group's house.

-What's that?

-I had a few beers, got angry.

So I just threw my iPhone into the wall.

-You kept it in there?

-Yeah, it looks quite nice as a feature.

HE LAUGHS

Outside, two of them prepare to light a fire.

We'll get the shoe with the needles that we got earlier,

just fill that full of the solvent.

That will keep that set on fire,

which will melt all the needles.

So, is the fire burning the needles almost like a ritual for you guys?

You could put it like that. Every other week, we'll have a fire,

collect them all up and burn them all, then just have a few beers.

So, how long will you carry on doing this?

Until I've a good life - a nice, clean area with no smackheads about.

And I'll keep doing that till I die.

So, as odd as it may sound,

I'm really pleased that I've met those guys,

because they've actually opened my eyes

to wider society's prejudice against the heroin user.

But I do think, although they are an extreme case,

it does beg the question that,

if these crimes aren't going to be reported,

how many other groups like this exist across the country?