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St David's is a large, well-kept church that's been in the centre of town since 1866. Next door is a school, across the road a pretty park. There's an Argos a few metres away.

Around the back three men are carefully unwrapping a very small bag of foil they've just dug out of a wallet. It's well-wrapped and it feels like they're never going to finish.

Inside is a fine brown powder.

“All this trouble for her,” says one of the men, Barrie.

The 34-year-old doesn’t look like your stereotypical heroin user. He has some small scars in his shaved head and his black trainers are falling apart but, overall, he looks after his appearance and is very articulate.

However, the small limp he has hints that something is wrong. Barrie is worried about losing his right leg, where he injected for nine years. From his ankle to his knee the leg is covered in big bruises and what appear to be scabs that are not healing properly.

“It is practically dead - they have said it will cause complications,” he says. “It hurts me when I walk.”

Barrie now injects into his groin.

(Image: Jonathan Myers)

(Image: Jonathan Myers)

This is Neath. It's in a county with one of the UK's 10 worst heroin death rates. Between 2014 and 2016, it had a rate of 5.7 deaths per 100,000 people caused by heroin and morphine misuse, the highest in Wales. The average across England is 1.9, while in Wales it's 2.3. Neighbouring Swansea is also high, with 4.9 deaths per 100,000.

The reasons for Neath Port Talbot's unwelcome place in this list (some call them "brown towns") are complex and varied, ranging from the decline of industry and employment to the services available for drug users.

And there's the relatively new phenomenon known as County Lines, the process by which serious criminal gangs from larger English cities like London, Birmingham and Liverpool target smaller towns around the UK. Violent and ruthless, they send vulnerable teenagers to these places to store, sell and deliver drugs. A line connecting London to Swansea was known as "the Mitch line".

Dozens of people have been convicted so far in 2018 as part of Operation Blue Thames, South Wales Police's response to County Lines gangs. Police say there are "probably" more drugs on the streets now due to an increase in demand. "This demand brings added complications including an increase in, and willingness to use, violence," says Detective Inspector Dave Peart.

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I meet another addict at about 2pm in the afternoon outside an empty shop in Neath town centre, near the station, and the first thing he does is apologise for drinking. He is with a group of people, including a woman who is slumped in the shop’s doorway after smoking spice, they say.

He's been homeless on the streets of Neath since he came out of jail five or six months ago and says “drugs block everything out and make my life worth living, even if it is killing me slowly”.

He says he wants to go back to prison, where there is more support.

(Image: Jonathan Myers) (Image: Jonathan Myers)

A couple of days later and I agree to meet Barrie outside the same shop. He is half an hour late and arrives running, covered in sweat. He is really apologetic but seems happy to see us. A couple more friends will join us in a bit, he says.

Speaking from the church doorway where he used to sleep near Victoria Gardens (the pretty park across the road), Barrie says he knows of 10 people last year, and five this year, who have lost their lives to heroin. He says he has had to save around 50 from overdoses.

He says he is taking fewer drugs now but that he has post-traumatic stress disorder caused by several attacks, including two knife attacks.

“When you are in a situation like that, you just want to block everything out,” he says.

(Image: Jonathan Myers)

Barrie, who was last jailed for 33 months for possession of cocaine, has been living in a house since April last year - but admits having been in “real trouble” in the past, drug dealing and being involved with gangs. He's tried to come off heroin before “but it seems to suck you back in”.

“I first tried heroin when I was 13. When you are on heroin, everything goes away. Heroin is the most perfect feeling you can have.”

When he talks about heroin, Barrie sometimes refers to it as “she” and describes the intense high of the first two or three hours (of a 12-hour high). He also mixes heroin with crack cocaine, known as a “snowball”, which he describes as a rollercoaster bringing users up and then down.

“It is like having a relationship - that stuff has always been there for me,” he says.

As we speak by the side of the church we are joined by two of Barrie’s friends. At first, they barely speak, instead listening to Barrie and nodding their heads occasionally. It is a sunny afternoon and they are smoking cigarette after cigarette, which the photographer with me keeps offering them.

Trevor - who has a stubble and wears a silver jumper matching his grey cap - has been on the streets since he was released from prison at the beginning of April. He has been taking heroin and crack for 12 years but says he was clean for a couple of years while he lived in Newport until the death of a family member led to him using again. He gets his money begging or shoplifting. The 30-year-old is currently sleeping in woods.

“You are stuck in a vicious circle - you get out with no money so you do the same thing,” he says.

They talk of addicts using heroin to self-medicate mental health problems, and of wanting to break the law just to have a roof over their heads, because “it is easier in prison”.

“It is an illness - we can’t help doing what we do. We have to do it to keep ourselves going,” Barrie says.

(Image: Jonathan Myers) (Image: Jonathan Myers)

Like Neath Port Talbot, many of the parts of Britain with the highest heroin death rates are coastal. Public Health England has suggested there is a link between areas of higher deprivation and drugs misuse.

Professor Alex Stevens, of the school of social policy, sociology and social research at the University of Kent, agrees, saying that the pattern of heroin-related deaths across the UK occur in places that used to have a lot of industrial employment and now have a lot of unemployment.

Neath Port Talbot is heavily affected by unemployment. According to the latest numbers from the Office of National Statistics, it has the third highest unemployment rate in Wales - though those with higher unemployment do not have a corresponding higher heroin death rate.

Long-term unemployment is linked to heroin deaths, which is a growing problem, Prof Stevens says. But he adds that it's not because heroin use is increasing but because the people using it are more vulnerable. He says areas like Neath Port Talbot have seen an increase in heroin use since the 1980s and said the purity of heroin in the area has increased since 2012.

(Image: Robert Melen)

Professor Katy Holloway, professor of criminology at the University of South Wales, suggests the problem is connected with steelworks job losses in the 1980s, which have led to 40 years of deprivation in the area.

She said that in areas which normally have poor quality heroin, users become more vulnerable to overdoses when good quality heroin becomes available.

Prof Holloway adds that an ageing population could also be responsible for a rising heroin death rate: “The core of heroin users are now in their 40s and have additional health problems, putting them more at risk.”

It's a point Jamie Harris, Swansea service manager for drug support service Barod, agrees with. Mr Harris, who is also part of the drug-related death panel in the area, said the majority of people experiencing fatal overdoses tend to be older, long-term users and predominantly men with poor health and mental health.

“They tend to have fallen out of services,” he adds. “They are using drugs and alcohol but are not in contact with us.

“What we are trying to find out is why they are not accessing the services - we want them to come into our services so we can work with them. There is no prejudice, we just want to make sure they are safe.”

In April, two members of the notorious Dem African criminal gang in London were jailed for trafficking a vulnerable teenage girl to Swansea to work in their heroin and crack cocaine operation. She was contacted on social media with an offer of work, then driven to Swansea and installed in a flat. She was told she now “belonged” to the gang, was intimidated, threatened, kept as a prisoner and made to hide heroin and cocaine inside her body. When police raided the flat they found her living in squalid conditions without heating or electricity.

(Image: Jonathan Myers)

The County Lines process is well-known to police, drug users and drugs services providers alike.

“Police are really good at catching drug dealers and do so week after week,” says former undercover drugs operative Neil Woods.

“This has never impacted on the market but it is changing its shape. If you arrest a drug dealer, that creates an opportunity for another dealer. The biggest gangs from the cities are taking those opportunities and going into county towns because they are prepared to be ruthless. This is why Wales is suffering.”

The drug trade is getting more violent, says Mr Woods, because youngsters realise they have to be intimidating if they want to survive in the drug trade. The most successful gangsters are the ones who are prepared to be the most violent. They use children because they're “disposable” and make it difficult for undercover police officers to get past the child.

Mr Woods says that while there may or may not be more heroin available, competition among drug dealers has increased and they are seeking more customers to expand the market.

“Heroin is getting stronger and cheaper,” he says. “When I started being an undercover officer in 1993, I was paying £10 for a bag of heroin. When I finished in 2007, I was still paying £10 a bag but, during the time, the average purity had gone up.”

On the streets of Neath, Barrie says he has seen more people coming from England to sell drugs and that they're targeting homeless people who they know will come back for more.

“A 15-year-old from Birmingham was selling heroin and crack the other day,” he says. “People come from all over the place to sell us drugs. There are more of them selling so prices have dropped. It is now £10 for a wrap of heroin. More violence has come with it.”

Mr Harris backs them up: “The area has been awash with drugs. The quality has gone up - the purity levels are higher than they used to be. It is a competitive market, with easy access to it [Neath is on the M4 motorway and Great Western main line].”

He says the County Lines phenomenon has changed things: in the past, a drugs raid would have had an impact on the availability of drugs in the area but that the extensive police work and dozens of convictions of Operation Blue Thames “has had no impact on supply - as soon as that person is taken out, it is being replaced by another. There has been a massive change”.

(Image: Jonathan Myers)

South Wales Police Detective Inspector Dave Peart acknowledged that the number of deaths per 100,000 of the population in Neath Port Talbot is “sadly high”, but said the actual number of deaths every year as the result of heroin use remains in single figures. “But each one of those deaths has devastating and far-reaching consequences,” he says.

“We continue with our daily enforcement on the streets of Swansea, Neath and Port Talbot and work closely with the harm-reduction agencies to encourage individuals to stop consuming drugs, particularly those most harmful, such as heroin.

“We recognise that many of those who fall into drug use are often vulnerable and do so for a variety of complex reasons. Our officers work determinedly to signpost those in need to appropriate support services, but we are equally committed to enforcing the law as the public would rightly expect, further protecting those being exploited by ruthless drug dealers.

“We will be relentless in the pursuit those involved in the supply of illegal drugs to ensure offenders are brought to justice.”

Detective Inspector Peart said Operation Blue Thames “was not a one-off” and that “identifying those involved in illegal drug supply and disrupting those operating in our local communities remains a daily priority for us”.

“The reality is that these gangs are using vulnerable children to run their drugs trade; teenagers who are easy to lure and groom with the promise of easy money and who are easy to replace if arrested,” he said.

“But enforcement is not a futile exercise; as recent results show it is having an impact and is sending a strong and continual message to the gang leaders that we are on their tails and will do all it takes to bring them to justice.”

He said an increase in demand “brings added complications including an increase in, and willingness to use, violence. It is also linked to other issues, including exploitation and acquisitive crime, where an addict will commit a crime to fund their habit. But while the methods may have changed in recent years, Class A drug use and the misery it causes is not a new phenomenon in the region. We and our partners are, however, becoming better at understanding, tackling and highlighting the problem, and we will continue to evolve our approach accordingly.”

Walking around Neath, residents talk about how drugs affect their town. A young woman in the bus station, near Victoria Gardens, says she sees up to six people under the influence of drugs in the park most days, with some of them passed out. “It is getting worse,” she says.

(Image: Jonathan Myers) (Image: Jonathan Myers) (Image: Jonathan Myers)

In the market, a stall holder says the situation is “terrible” and bad for their trade. She says they have found needles in the bathrooms in the past and that paramedics have had to be called.

But the market’s caretaker, David Court, says drug use in the toilets has decreased since they installed a special type of blue light which makes it harder for people to inject. But the issue at the moment is homeless people sleeping in the toilets throughout the day.

“We find needles behind the bins [outside] pretty regularly,” Mr Court says. “One day, I found six needles. Before we had the lights, there were needles in toilets as well. They are like zombies, they come through the market but they don’t hang around here.”

A concentrated joint effort to reduce anti-social behaviour and problems of homelessness and addiction in Neath Town Centre has been under way since 2017.

Neath Together involves a large line-up of organisations including, to name a few, Neath Port Talbot Council, South Wales Police, Neath Inspired BID, homelessness charities Caer Las and the Wallich, the Salvation Army, traders, business organisations, WCADA (Welsh Centre for Action on Dependency and Addiction), the Welsh Ambulance Service NHS Trust and the Business Crime Reduction Unit.

It also involves residents and visitors to Neath taking part in a “see it – report it” drive to help police root out any bad behaviour.

Outreach workers now part of the multi-agency Neath Together campaign are said to have already helped a number of homeless people who had addiction problems back into accommodation.

Despite having had a home for just over a year now, Barrie still keeps in touch with the people living on the streets of Neath - and sometimes he takes them home for the night. He says he would like people who are homeless in Neath to have more support.

“There are people dying on the streets,” he says. “And to die on the streets alone, I can’t think of anything worse.”