The redbrick terraces of south Halifax have a fierce privacy, which makes public recognition of a local trade in heroin hard to trace.
Pakistanis wandering near the bricked-up squalor of Vickerman Street, believed to be at the hub of the local trade, offered little more than puzzled shrugs at the weekend.Many of those Asians with a heroin addiction here will not even make use of public drug services. Their families seek out private health care instead, attracted by the secrecy it offers and convinced that itis less of a part of the state enforcement process.The community’s reticence poses a threat to the town, say health agencies “It masks the true number of addicts. We just don’t know what we are dealing with,” said a source close to Calderdale and Kirklees health authority.The authority believes it could soon have an epidemic on its hands, fuelled by dire economic circumstances, in which a ballooning population of young Asian men chases meagre local employment prospects.For Halifax’s heroin traffick-ers, a daily flight from Pakistan to Manchester has made all the difference, allowing heroin to be brought back after frequent trips home by members of the huge Pakistani population.The heroin is shuttled byroad from Manchester to Bradford, where the trade is centred, then worked down the M62 trans-Pennine corridor. Halifax’s problems are mirrored in the small mill towns of Colne and Nelson, in east Lancashire.Volumes of heroin moved around Halifax by family-runtrafficking organisations haveled to a generation of couriers becoming addicts, creating “an entirely new pattern of involvement”, says Professor Geoffrey Pearson of Goldsmiths’ College, London, who has worked with addicts in West Yorkshire.. Britain’s poorest families still face deep inequalities in income, job prospects and health, despite government attempts to improve standards of living for the least well-off.

Britain’s poorest families still face deep inequalities in income, job prospects and health, despite government attempts to improve standards of living for the least well-off.
A study analysing the levels of poverty in Britain, by the New Policy Institute, an independent think-tank, has found there are still “shocking” levels of poverty among single-parent families, and of youth unemployment.The authors criticise the falling value of the state’s income support benefit, revealing that it is now at its lowest level compared with general wage levels for 17 years, at roughly 20 per cent of average earnings. In 1983 it was worth nearly 30 per cent of average wages.In the past three years, the numbers on very low incomes, defined as 40 per cent of average incomes, have risen by 1.5 million. “The figures are at a historic high,” said Guy Palmer, co-director of the institute.The report, published today by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, analysed 50 indicators of poverty, including general wealth, health and education. Education and unemployment were improving slowly, but the general picture was of static or deteriorating statistics.Of 49 indicators compared year-on-year, 17 had improved and 23 were the same.

Nine had worsened, such as rates of female obesity going up to 20 per cent in 1998; more than 15,500 young people needing drug addiction treatment; and families in temporary housing up to nearly 70,000 this year, a record.Mr Palmer said there wereproblems of a “major magnitude”. The finding that more than half single parents lived on less than half average incomes was “shockingly high”. Child poverty was alarming, with 2 million children in workless households, although that was 20 per cent lower than in 1994.Although total youth unemployment is down, it is nearly twice the average, with half a million people aged 18 to 24 out of work. Working environments are increasingly unstable; more than 40 per cent of people losing their jobs in the previous six months had been unemployed during the previous two years.Mr Palmer said the NPI was “reserving its position” on the effectiveness of the minimum wage.