[jaunty music] Liverpool. A world city at the heart of the new county of Merseyside. It’s a city full of contrasts. A kaleidoscope of contradictions … Liverpool Narcos I: Heroin, public information film, Sky Documentaries 2021
We don’t class ourselves as being English: we’re the People’s Republic of Liverpool [laughs]. ibid. old lady in greenhouse
We have a degree of accepted lawlessness here. It’s like Cowboys and Indians. They don’t follow the rules ’cause they’re outlaws … the epicentre of drugs … Welcome to Liverpool. ibid. comments
What was it about Liverpool that made it such a big player in the drug trade? The docks? ibid. Michael Showers, the boss
The hard part was getting it off [ship]. Customs were very very alert in Liverpool. Our firm had people who had relatives in senior positions. And that was it. It was just a matter of choosing the right time for them to take it off. Then pass it over to our sales division. And our sales division did their work. And then when I came home, just counted the money. ibid.
Pleading guilty at 15 to something I hadn’t done was my greatest regret. My greatest regret. Because that started it all. ibid.
In the ’80s a number of things conspired to bring brown smokeable heroin to Liverpool … 47% of black workers unemployed, 43% of white workers [news clip] … No opportunities whatsoever … Young people weren’t of any value to society, or so they felt. And then of course we had the Toxteth riots in ’81 … A visitor from the US came in the ’80s and said, This is like Beirut. This is like a bombed-out shell, a husk of a city and a number of other things. ibid. comments
The game-changer was a cheap, high-grade smoking heroin became available. It was from Pakistan. And I’ve got Pakistani family. So I immediately kind of seized the opportunity to capitalize on that. Yeah. ibid.
Samples: if you went to source in Pershawa, you can buy a kilo over there for £2,500, 3K. Yeah, and that would be 80-90%. ibid.
It was like total destruction. It spread like cancer. Straightening out your foil, putting in your little bit of powder, at the corner where you wanted it. Getting a little pleat in your foil. Tilting it a little bit. Your flame underneath the powder. And then inhaling. Everything seemed to slow down a bit. You feel comfortably numb. No more worries, no stress, nuttin’, just comfy. ibid. Billy Moore
It was an epidemic that happened in this city. You know this city was flooded with narcotics. ibid.
Everyone’s on heroin? How the hell did that happen? ibid.
Operation Rainman surveillance … Suddenly, these guys were doing seriously well. And flaunting it. And that kind of rankled with us. So we kind of took that personal. ibid. rozzers
This was the early ’80s. You drove around in a white Rolls Royce? ibid. rozzers to Showers
So in 1983 the police tried to prosecute Michael Showers for the second time in short succession. On this occasion it was for possession of a firearm, cannabis, and heroin. The case collapsed in court. And Michael Showers to this day maintains that the case was never legitimate against him. In effect he was fitted up. ibid.
British Customs subsequently bring the heroin into the UK. ibid.
Rozzer: You were convicted of smuggling heroin?
Showers: Yes, convicted on fabricated evidence by Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise. ibid.
And he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Which for that amount of drugs was extraordinary … The system wanted to make an example of him. ibid.
In 1991 Michael went to prison for 20 years. He served 10. Then in 2010 he was arrested in Turkey and charged with intent to supply heroin internationally. He denied the charges but was sentenced to 10 years in a Turkish prison. He returned home to Liverpool in 2016. ibid.
It’s long been known that German soldiers used a form of Methamphetamine called Pervitin during the Second World War. But have tales of Nazis on speed diverted attention away from the other side of the story: the widespread use of stimulants by British and American troops? Did WWII unleash the world’s first pharmacological arms race? James Holland, World War Speed: The Drugs that Won WWII, BBC 2019
Many Nazis including the Fuhrer himself were heavy drug users. ibid.
Even more than keeping troops awake, British commanders wanted a pill that made men fearless. ibid.
‘Benzedrine had been introduced to the UK in 1935.’ ibid. expert
Whether Monty himself brought Benzedrine into the desert and whether he saw it as a moral builder … Orders for Benzedrine came straight from the top. ibid.
‘Here in Argentina it is known as Burundanga; it’s a drug that has an immediate effect.’ Scam City s1e1: Buenos Aires, bird in hotel room, National Geographic 2012
An aggressive criminalisation of the poor … The poor are thrown into prison and must forfeit all their property for being caught with small amounts of the same drugs. Chris Hedges, lecture New York Sanctuary for Independent Media, ‘American Anomie’, Youtube 2.01.07, 2018
Drug crime is shifting from many big cities to the countryside. In the last five years the number of offences has fallen in urban areas but risen in rural ones. Drugsland: Going Country, BBC news, BBC 2022
Just being a little compassionate and understanding that being addicted to something shouldn’t been treated as going on a murderous rampage and punished with decades of imprisonment … a public health issue and not a criminal issue. The Secret History of Drugs and Capitalism, Youtube 16.17, Second Thought 2022
We went from a world where drugs were just another part of life to a world where drugs because deeply embedded in our global power structures, often for the worse. ibid.
In the US alone, somewhere between a quarter and a half million people are in jail for drug offences. ibid.
The opioid crisis is largely a product of the marketing efforts by Purdue and the Sackler family … The nearly 140 opioid-related deaths a day we have here in the States. The Opioid Crisis is Much Worse than You Think, Youtube 18.58, Second Thought 2021
‘The ability to supply, withhold, stockpile and police drugs, and to influence the public conversation about drugs, has been central to projections of US imperial power since the middle of the 20th century’. ibid. Suzanna Reiss, We Sell Drugs: The Alchemy of US Empire
Pleasurable drug use is so contradictory to the Calvanist culture America has been its identity around. ibid.
The first time I came up was like nothing I’d ever experienced. It felt like a beam of divine light shone down from space through Darrien’s roof and into his living room exactly where I was sitting, as warm Indian Ocean waves passed up and down my body. Baby Reindeer, Netflix 2024
Never threaten someone you can’t go through on. Ferry 2021 starring Frank Lammers & Elise Schaap & Huub Stapel & Raymond Thiry & Monic Hendrickx & Huub Smit & Juliette van Adrenne et al, director Cecelia Verheyden, Ferry
Welcome to Amsterdam. One of the most beautiful cities in the world and a paradise for culture lovers. ibid.
For Brink I’ll do anything. He took me in when I was nothing. He is my mentor … Brink takes care of us and we take care of each other … I am the happiest man in the world. ibid.
I want to know who did this to my son, Ferry. And I want you to shoot them. ibid. Brink
Drugs? … Well, neighbour, we’re beginning to get to know each other. ibid. Danielle to Ferry
This is the best trip you’ve ever had. I swear. ibid.
It’s beginning to work, yeah. Groovy pills! ibid.
February 11th 2010 Columbia, Missouri: Police [SWAT team raid on family home] discover a grinder, a pipe and a small amount of marijuana. The Culture High 2014 ***** director Brett Harvey
What our the nuances that define a culture? It is the way we police ourselves? … 77 years ago marijuana became prohibited in the United States ... It is now the polarising topic … Should marijuana be legalised? ibid.
It doesn’t cause schizophrenia. ibid. Dr Nutt
A sense of peace, pain relief … That trauma also gives the person then the pain that person tries to escape from … You look at what caused pain their lives. ibid. expert
The majority of politicians said alcohol is not a drug. ibid. Dr Nutt
Is the rational of protecting people against themselves valid? ibid.
Where Is Mr Marks? ibid. Daily Mirror front page
The prohibition of marijuana laws makes everything more dangerous. ibid. Howard Marks
We live in a state of politics where legislators seem to regard the passage of laws as much more important than the results of their enforcement. ibid. William Taft
I’d make sure there were sensible laws for them [rozzers] to enforce … What creates respect for the law is justice … seeing it done. ibid. Howard Marks
People warring on us. ibid. critic
Private prisons … make it profitable to incarcerate people. ibid.
You just become a commodity rather than a human being. ibid. Annie Machon
It’s not rational or logical, it’s financial. ibid. Snoop Dogg
Blacks are arrested at X4/X8 that of Whites. ibid. critic
One law for the rich powerful, and one law for the rest of us. ibid. Annie Machon
And yet the War on Drugs continues on. Only now with medical discoveries. ibid. critic
The most non-toxic medicine I have ever encountered. ibid. expert
The number of people who are killed by prescription drugs … ibid. Hancock
We discovered that the most harmful drug of all was alcohol … I got a phone call one after saying you’ve got to resign. ibid. Dr Nutt, former UK government drugs czar
Turns out there’s this thing called lobbying … ibid. researcher