‘How can it possibly be Ann Widdecombe’s fault?’
‘Because it was Widdecombe who first brought in the MDT. That single decision has turned some cannabis smokers into heroin addicts.’
‘That’s quite a quantum leap,’ I suggest, ‘and some accusation.’
‘No,’ says William, ‘it was inevitable, and it only happened because Widdecombe knew nothing about the drug culture in prisons. How could she? Neither did you, before you were sent to Belmarsh. And worse, no one seems to have explained the problem to Blunkett either, because both are indirectly responsible for an unnecessary rise in heroin addicts, and even in some cases their deaths.’
‘Hold on,’ I say. ‘That’s accusing Blunkett and Widdecombe of manslaughter and cannot be either fair or accurate.’
‘When you take an MDT, they test you for marijuana [cannabis], cocaine, crack cocaine and heroin,’ continues William, ignoring my comment. ‘It’s a urine test, and your sample is sent to an independent laboratory and then returned to the prison a week later with the result.’
‘I’m with you so far.’
‘Marijuana can show up in urine for as long as twenty-eight days. You may well have smoked a joint three weeks ago, even forgotten about it, but it will still come up as positive on an MDT, which is not the case with heroin. Because if you drink pints of water immediately after taking the drug, you can clear any trace of heroin out of your system within twenty-four hours, which means you won’t test positive.’
Pay attention, Home Secretary.
‘If the test comes back positive for marijuana, the Governor can add twenty-eight days to your sentence and take away all your privileges. Twenty-eight days for one joint,’ says William. ‘So in prison some marijuana smokers who are on short sentences turn to heroin as an alternative because there’s less chance of their sentence being lengthened. Result? They often leave prison as heroin addicts, having never touched a hard drug on the outside. Fact: a percentage of them die within weeks of being released. Why? Because the heroin in prison is considerably weaker compared with the gear you can get “on the out”, which causes them to overdose when they inject the same amount. This is a direct result of government legislation.’
‘So what would you do about it?’ I ask.
‘The Mandatory Drug Test should be for Class A and B drugs only [heroin, cocaine], not for marijuana. [32] This simple decision would cut down the desire to experiment with heroin among twenty per cent of the prison population and would also save countless lives. If any your officials are stupid enough to suggest this isn’t true, Home Secretary, tell them not to rely simply on statistics, but to spend a few weeks in prison where they’ll quickly find out the truth.’
‘I presume, however, it is true that drugs are the direct cause of our prisons being so overcrowded?’
‘Yes, but it’s a myth that heroin is the main cause of street crime. Crack cocaine is just as much of a problem for the police.’ I don’t interrupt. ‘Crack cocaine,’ William continues, ‘is for crackheads, and is far more dangerous than heroin. If you take cocaine you are immediately satisfied, and can be on a high after only one dose, and as you come off it, you may well fall asleep. If you take crack cocaine, once you’ve run out of your supply, you’ll do anything to get your hands on some more to prolong the experience. It’s the crack-cocaine addicts that rob old ladies of their handbags and young girls of their mobile phones, not heroin addicts; they’re more likely to beg, borrow or shoplift. The problem the government hasn’t acknowledged is that Britain is now the crack-cocaine capital of Europe, and if you want to set up an award for European drugs city of the year, you wouldn’t have to look any further than Bradford. That city would win first prize, year in and year out.’
‘Do you have a solution to the problem?’ I ask.
‘We should go down the Swiss route,’ William suggests. ‘They register addicts, who can report to a doctor and immediately become part of a detox programme and get their fix of methadone or subitrex. The Swiss recently held a referendum on the issue and the public voted overwhelmingly in favour of the registration of drug addicts and tackling the problem head-on. Result: street crime has fallen by 68 per cent.’
Well, what do you know, Mr Blunkett?
‘Do you also want to learn about the National Health detox programme?’ asks William. I nod. ‘If you’re a heroin addict “on the out” and report your addiction to a local GP, it will take you eight to ten weeks to get yourself registered. However, if you commit a crime and are sent to prison, you don’t have to wait, because you’ll be put on a detox programme the following morning.’ William pauses. ‘I’ve known addicts who’ve committed a crime simply to ensure they get themselves into prison and onto detox overnight.’
What about that, Home Secretary?
‘And worse,’ William continues, ‘most of the addicts “on the out” who go as far as getting themselves registered, fail to turn up ten weeks later to begin the course, because by then they’ve either lost interest, or are too far gone to care.’
Enter the Secretary of State for Health.
William looks around the room at the fifty or so workers packing their little plastic bags. ‘I can tell you every one in this room who’s on drugs, even the gear they’re on, and it often only takes a glance. And you’d be surprised how many of your friends “on the out”, even one or two of those who have been condemning you recently, are among them.’
‘Taking cannabis can hardly be described as a major crime,’ I suggest. ‘My bet is it will be decriminalized in the not too distant future.’
‘I’m not talking about cannabis, Jeffrey. The biggest crisis the government is facing today is the rapid growth of heroin addicts. I can name three lords, two Members of Parliament, and two television personalities who are on Class A drugs. I know because a member of my family has been supplying them for years.’ He names all of them. Two I already knew about, but the other five come as a surprise. ‘In theory they should all be in jail along with you,’ he adds. Check on all the young criminals coming into prison and you’ll begin to understand it’s a problem that few people, especially the politicians, seem willing to face up to. ‘On your own spur alone,’ he continues, ‘five of the lifers are on heroin, and still getting the skag delivered to them every week.’
‘How do they manage that?’ I ask.
‘Mainly during visits,’ he says, ‘mouth, backside, ears, even secreted in a woman’s hair. Because of the Human Rights Act, prison searches are fairly cursory.’
‘But this is a Double A Category high-security prison,’ I remind him.
‘That’s not a problem if you’re desperate enough, and there’s nothing more desperate than a heroin addict, even when he’s locked up in the segregation block.’
‘But how?’ I press him.
‘Don’t forget that most A-cats are also remand prisons, and so have prisoners coming in and out every day. If the new young criminals didn’t already know, it wouldn’t take them long to discover the economics of supply and demand, especially when such large sums of money are involved. A gram of heroin [a joey] may be worth forty pounds on the street, but in here it can be split up into five bags and sold for a couple of hundred. At those prices, some prisoners are willing to risk swallowing a bag of heroin just before they’re taken down; then they simply have to wait to retrieve it; after all, there’s a toilet in every cell. And,’ he adds, ‘my brother Rory can swallow a lump of heroin the size of a small eraser – five hundred pounds in value – hold it in his throat and still carry on a conversation. As soon as he’s safely back in his cell, he coughs it up.’