Why is drugs use more prevelant in certain areas?

[snmum]

Light touchpaper and stand well back! (maybe i should have changed my name)

was just wondering. i moved from a very large town, there was a uni etc but it wasnt exactly poverty stricten. We had a few heroin deaths but not alot for the size of town.

My mum works as a dispenser and has to give out the methodone prescriptions. her area is a very small town, but drugs use is high.

I have moved to a seaside town and drugs use seems high. there was a death in my street recently of a heroin overdose and has been several (not just in my street!) since we moved here. It seems a very 'sleepy' place but the drugs use seems high. i am only a mother here aswell, i have not been offered them. i am just very aware of things 'going on'

I just wondered (maybe foolishly) whether there is a certain tendancy towards taking drugs. i realise poverty often is used as a factor. the other thing i was wondering was whether heroin use isnt just more prevelant in some areas but is publicised more iykwim

Already started to wonder whether i should be posting this. just wondered why there is higher heroin use in some places than others?

The reason i am posting this is because i feel very saddened by this recent death. She seemed as though she had so much to live for. I often wonder whether we as a community should do more to stop people selling it. i mean i am not thick, but I realise who the dealers are and arent

eek

boredom? Perhaps if kids have less to do and are just hanging around, they are more likely to get into drugs????
Don't know, just speculating

Seaside towns often seem to have a higher concentration of people living temporarily in B&B accommodation, and where I used to live the local seaside towns had a lot of ex psychiatric patients housed there under care in the community. Controversial topic, perhaps I should keep my trap shut on this one.

no i am geniunely interested. i realise it is a contraversial subject, first one i have ever posted on here most probably

My mum comes from a fishing community in the NE of Scotland which has the unhappy notoreity of being one of the worst blackspots for heroin use in Scotland.

I have been there it is a bleak windswept spot with nothing to do other than the normal occupation of alochol. There is also high unemployment. The cost of heroin is also a factor whilst other legalised drugs have become more expensive the cost of heroin has consistently fallen.

I think generally drug use is on the rise everywhere, but I don't think that is necessarily a factor.

I've often wondered the same thing.There is a real heroin problem in the old mining communities around here,but not much of one where I live.

However,I used to work at a primary school in a very well regarded ,expensive,semi rural village a few miles away from where I live & one day I found a crack pipe in the school garden.I suppose it is everywhere these days.

heroin is a classless drug, people percieve that its only "unemployed, young juviniles off council estates" who become involved in heroin and statistically it probably is, cant answer why nice small market towns have the problem or why seaside towns have, although i feel spacemonkey may have hit the nail on the head for that one, boredom most likely, something to do and then unfortunatly they become addicted.
i dont think that the media/govt help at all, they would rather us believe that all heroin takers are from single parent families, shoplifters/burgulars , eg just general low lifes, do you remember the shock and horror in the press when the pretty, young girl from a quaint village in herefordshire was found dead after a heroin overdose, she went to a good school, had a good upbringing etc, so wasnt a "sterotypical drug user" . dont think that there would of been much of a headline if a young petty thief had died of an overdose.
sorry dont know where i am going with this, i can only comment on my own( younger brothers) experience with it which basically is, someone can be in complete despair over thier drug adiction, go to see a doctor and be put on a 9 MONTH waiting list to see another doctor who may refer them to a rehab centre, heroin addicts live day to day, to think they have to wait at least 9 mths is soul destroying.
you will never be able to stop people from selling it, for every drug dealer that goes to prison, there are another 10 waiting to full thier shoes, i hate heroin with a passion, it has complety destroyed our family and i hate to think of people looking down thier noses heroin addicts as 9times out of 10 they are so caught up in the drug addiction that they can never see a way out if it. sorry its just something that is is really close to my heart at the mo.

I grew up in a rural area and casual drug use (LSD/E etc.) was the norm. Heroin was a big problem on the council estates and in the smaller market towns. little kids on the estates still use glue.

I don't think the LSD thing was really attributable to boredom, but underage drinking/clubbing was much easier, so it didn't seem a big step IYSWIM. Also, there were lots of parties in fields, out of sight so it wasn't a big risk.

At Uni those of us from the country defo seemed to have been more exposed to a wider variety of drugs than our counterparts from the city. M-C kids from london always seemed to have had particulary sheltered lives.

my teenage sisters assure me things are much the same now as they were...

BTW, I was at sixth form with the girl from Herefordshire....Small market towns and villages have huge problems with poverty and unemployment. It's just not as immediately obvious.

I hear what you say about drugs and poverty but on the other hand look at celebrity - all that money and imo still not the brains to steer clear of a potentially life threatening substance - its not like they haven't seen people around them dying of overdoses. My dh argues that they have so much and done everything that they get bored and drugs is a new experience - well its one view but to me they're just plain stupid! I was offered drugs in my youth and never felt bad about saying 'no thanks'. I suppose I'm the sort of person who likes to stay in control of my faculties - good or bad!

dp's family live in hereford marialusia, his stepbrother went to aylestone, i must admit, first time i went down there about 6 years ago, i was surprised at how many young people there were hanging around the town with nothing much to do, drinking etc, i was one of those people that thought drugs were a inner city problem having lived in b.ham all my life, nothing suprises me any more re drugs, drug dealers are everywhere.

Tiredemma-have you ever been to Leominster??!

yes, is that where you are from? dp's stepmum does a lot of work there , and she lived there for a while aswell

I was bought up in a village and everyone knows everyone including the surrounding towns - it seemed that anyone who was or is using drugs is immediately found out (not that it stops them) because everyone knows everyone, in a town you know people do it but just not exactly how many and who deals it, i'm sure it would be scary if we did know just how mnay people did it. People think heroin addict - thief/scum etc. not all adicts are thiefs, some work for their money and have never stolen anything - this is from experince with my friends/boyfriends on the other hand some do I my ex boyfriend has even stole form his nan - he is even devastated that he could do this - devastated enough to stop for a year but it is a temptation even after rehabilitation - being sold on most street corners in his town nr. manchester - It is an evil drug that destroys lives.

Drugs are often more prevalent in seaside areas as there are some fishing boats that bring drugs ib. I used to teach in a Fife coatal villafe and while I was there father and uncle of one of my 5th years were done for drug dealing - they would sail over to Holland and buy stuff then bring it back. Its less common on the west coast of Scotland where boats tend to go out into the Atlantic rather than the North Sea. There is certainly a lot fewer dugs here in the Western Isles, but that might be more because of the fact that everyone knows everyone and so if you were on drugs your Mum would find out pronto!