Rebecca Roseanna Gyles Writing for Journalism (assessment two) Article for Print Written for Maverick (concept publication outlined in notes)
Leeds students sustain UK’s largest black market for drugs
F
rom September until Christmas anyone with access to the black market and a little cash for a kick-start, can make enough money selling drugs to students in Leeds to not have to work for the rest of the year.
For most of the students and young people proportionally bigger than in other cities, or at living in Leeds today it has become the norm to least a lot more indiscreet, I took to the Internet be regularly approached by individuals, either for some much-loved research. I found articles
“nobody knows what they could do or what’s in them”
working for these illicit vendors or by dealers mostly about students taking drugs, one about themselves. They offer cards, pens and even a young business student caught my eye. He’d lighters with their business name and number finished university but stayed in Leeds to develop on and rarely anything else. They then either what became an allegedly huge drug ring, before recite a list of psychoactive substances you can the police caught him. The large market could purchase through them, or say nothing as though then have formed due to other students taking you’re already supposed to know the nature of a similar path. According to Leeds City Guide their business. What’s more the actual ordering 10% of all UK graduates were educated in comes with 24/7 free delivery, so I guess you’d Leeds, a good deal of graduates each year stay need to be able to drive too, to really compete. in Leeds too and with the residual effects of the unemployment crisis still heavily impeding the After observing this for a while I began taking graduate jobs market it wouldn’t be surprising if whatever was supplied with the details and part of the reason for the expanding drugs market talking to the people handing them out. The last in Leeds was in-fact the unemployment crisis. card I accepted was called PC Doc, it had pictures of tech on it but as I looked the man who had A more thorough search led to an article by handed me it assured me “it’s not for PCs though The Tab, a student news site specializing in the yeah?” The information so far was gathered coverage of “news students care about, in a style from other students and the people giving out they actually want to read.” The article from phone numbers, who were more than willing 2013 refers to a nationwide study conducted to chat about their illegal affairs in most cases. by The Tab to produce statistics on substance Wondering why this market seemed to be abuse in student populations. The findings are outlined under the headline “Revealed: Who does the most drugs?” With Leeds taking 1st place and Manchester closely following. The
2
findings made national news when many other big name news brands covered the piece.
IMAGES AND TEXT BY REBECCA ROSEANNA GYLES
An unidentified white powder pictured in a young student’s pencil case shows visually how serious the situation has became.
The question then: has this news influenced the seemingly saturated The results then also raise questions about the ethical responsibilities market we experience today? To answer this more information needed of journalists regarding the effects on society certain published to be sourced from young people living in Leeds since before the work can have, an example of the ever prominent dilemma publication of this news. This was an easy task to complete since 18-25 journalists face; deciding whether it is still important to keep year olds and students make up over half of the population of Leeds. I people informed when this action can produce an adverse reaction. started by targeting this group and recording their answers to a series of anonymous questions, the results are featured in the table below. To get a clearer perspective of this market I decided I needed to speak to somebody properly involved. After multiple failed attemps to secure some sort of interview via the phone numbers I had aquired an opportunity seemed to fall into my lap when a work collegue of a friend of mine was fired. After failing to turn up to work for three straight days the then chef was dropped with immediete action. Rumours began to circulate regarding the reasons he’d failed to turn up, the most prominent of which was that he’d been on a huge cocaine fueled binge. Then began the speculation into his life in general... He was a very chatty guy by all accounts. He was This table shows data collected from 14 individuals in Headingley and Hyde Park on Saturday the 7th of November 2015
let go for repeatedly not turning up but
it
was common
knowledge to the other staff that he was also dealing drugs.
This research in the Hyde Park and Headingley areas of Leeds because these areas have a large student and young person population. Special effort was made to ask an equal ratio of women to men to keep the results as unbiased and accurate as possible. For really precise results a much larger sample of people would be needed, but as a starting point the results do confirm a large majority of young people (92.86%), have been targeted by drug dealers in Leeds at least once. 92.31% of these have noticed an increase in the frequency this is happening in the past few years. It does seem likely then that the
MORE >>>>>>>
publication of The Tab’s study is in part the cause of the significant market growth of the illegal drugs trade in Leeds in the past three years.
3
My friend told me this when I visited for a coffee; I wasn’t totally convinced, however, as my luck would have it, whilst I was enjoying my coffee the gentlemen in question walked in. My friend, having just been talking to me about him, rushed over to tell me it was in-fact him after he’d walked through to the kitchen. I have to say he didn’t look like a criminal, if you can say that. In the few minutes he spent in the kitchen collecting his chef knives and saying his last goodbyes I quickly convinced my friend I needed him to introduce me so I could get my interview. I explained I was just looking for a short interview with a drug dealer for a piece I was writing and that he’d have complete anonymity if he about ten minutes while he smoked cigarette, in a bus stop! Crime was clearly deeply rooted in this individual. He’d lived in Leeds for ten years and spent much of this time heavily involved in drugs and drug dealing, when asked if he’d noticed an increase in competition in the last few years he replied “yeah of course, it’s a really tempting way to make fast money for a lot of people”. I asked if this increase was the reason he’d gotten an ‘ongrid’ job, he said “No, I just want to get away from it, I have a little baby now so I really don’t want to go to jail”. This makes what he said next a little ironic. “I’d be a lot more pissed off I lost this job though if I couldnt go away and make a whole months pay in a week”. Once we really got talking it turns out he had some pretty strong opinions and was actualy quite jolly and easy to talk to...
The above photograph shows an example of some of the cards I acquired, from the people I felt looked the least dodgy and likely to not mind a chat. They are, however, just a few in terms of how many were offered in just over two weeks.
Do you think that the government ought to take better methods to controll drugs, for example taxing, regulating and legalizing them? I think they should, for the good of the people, because it would stop so many deaths from ‘bad drugs’, or stop children being able to easily get them. People like me don’t really want them to though because there is too much money involved! Sometimes I do think it would be better, even for me if they were legal though, its not really a very nice job, its scary, I could go to jail or even worse I could be responsible for someones death!
but you just have to try not think about these things.
What do you mean you could be responsible for someones death? Well
I
don’t
know
what
i’m
selling
them
all
the
time,
especially when its the class A’s, there could be anything in them really. There’s so many of these new ‘designer drugs’ too, they real
thing, nobody
knows what
they
get sold as the
could do or what’s in them.
Did you know it is possible to buy kits to test what’s in them? Yeah, i’ve heard of those, I looked into getting one acually... the thing is though, if I payed a lot of money for something and then found out it wasnt what I thought, i’d still have to sell it wouldnt i? Unless it was deadly of course (laughs), but i dont think theres a test for that, they just tell you what its got the most of in I think. He had a tatoo on his neck that said ‘New Life’ so before we finished up I asked him if he’d gotten it when he’d decided to get a proper job, he said
4
“yeah but that was like three years ago, doesn’t look like its working does it!”
IMAGES AND TEXT BY REBECCA ROSEANNA GYLES
would be said drug dealer. He agreed and we chatted for
5