Our Drugs War

This three-part series presented and directed by award-winning filmmaker, Angus Macqueen, examines the global story of drugs from the streets of Edinburgh to the poppy fields of Afghanistan: from demand and consumption to supply. The series demonstrates that the astonishing cost and harm to society from our war on drugs is now worse than that of the drugs themselves.

Our Drugs War: Everyone's at It turns the spotlight on Britain, where one-in-six young people have used class A drugs. It explores the taboos around talking about drugs honestly. Focusing on Scotland - named by the UN as Europe's drug capital - the film shows the stark contrast between the rich, city centre of Edinburgh and its underprivileged estates where up to 60 to 70 percent of the residents can be drug users. Macqueen visits one such estate with two volunteers for anti-drug charity Crew.  They show him how the drug trade operates on a day to day basis in front of - and often with the participation of - children, some as young as eight.  While all social classes use drugs equally, 70% of addicts have left school by the age of 16 and 85% are unemployed. 

The police fail to control supply - in Scotland seizing just 1% of the heroin consumed - criminals make money, and demand only increases. With the advent of synthetic drugs like GBL, until recently quite legal and easily available online, banning and policing are becoming ever more random and ineffectual.

Angus meets parents whose children have died as a result of drug abuse. Edinburgh-based Suzanne Dyer's son Chris died from an addiction to GBL, a compound found in some industrial cleaners and widely used by clubbers. GBL became a popular "dance" drug when GHB another similar, and less potent, substance was banned.

John Arthur's charity - Crew - which supported Suzanne Dyer and her son - sees the obsession with the banning and classification of drugs as increasingly irrelevant to what is happening on the streets.  He's not alone. Angus speaks to former government drugs advisor, Professor David Nutt , who was famously sacked when he began to say in public that present policy is not based on scientific evidence.

Meanwhile, the needless deaths continue. Elizabeth, from a village outside Reading, first discovered both her twin sons' addictions when they began to beg from her. She believed by giving them money she was preventing them from committing a crime. More than £100,000 later, at the age of 27, Nick - one of the twins - died of a heroin overdose.  She now runs a campaign for the families of addicts.

Angus also meets a former drug smuggler who made his first million by the time he was 22.  Today he lectures trainee police and customs officers about drugs and has published a book about his life with plans for a feature film and even a computer game.

Set in New York, programme two, Life and Death of a Dealer, looks at the social cost of the drugs war through one man's life and the final film Birth of a Narco-State shows how our war on drugs is fuelling a long term civil war in Afghanistan - the world's first Narco-Theocracy.