I smoked heroin every day at 16 and slept with men to fund habit – drug addicts like me should get help not prison

FEW people knows the dangers of Bristol’s drug scene better than Shanon Hathway, who was addicted to crack, heroin and alcohol for 20 years.

The 37-year-old, clean for six years, said: “Every day I’d wake up in need of a fix and spend the rest of the day trying to find the cash to pay for drugs. I’d sleep with men for cash for drugs.”

For  20 years I was in and out of prison after turning to petty theft to fund my habit.”

Shanon — who lives with  daughter Lexi, four, and  husband Keith, 46, also a former user — works as a criminal justice recovery worker  at Bristol’s Nelson Trust, a charity that helps people whose lives have been ruined by addiction.

She says: “Drug users need help, not to be punished.”

Bristol police  have  in recent years  encouraged users into recovery, rather than locking them up.

“They are  victims in this too,” explains Inspector Green. “We are after the gang leaders at the top of the chain who cause all this misery.”

Matt Shepherd*, a recovering drug user and  dealer from nearby Weston-super-Mare,  Somerset, was groomed into gangs as a child.

“I was brought up around substance addiction and my family were drug dealers,” he explains.

The 40-year-old has been in recovery for six months and now volunteers for With You, a charity that helps people battling drug, alcohol or mental health issues.

He explains: “I started smoking cannabis and heroin when I was 12 and was injecting heroin by 16.  By 17, I was addicted to crack.

“I was groomed by older drug dealers and got into gangs when I was 13.”

Between the ages of 15 and 27 Matt was in and out of jail.

After his final prison stint he was put on methadone, which was his first introduction to recovery.

Matt is now married with kids and has helped hundreds of drug users.

The Sun was invited to witness a drug raid in Bristol first-hand, one of several across the South West last month as part of Operation Scorpion, a new crackdown on the city’s most dangerous drug dealers.

In the course of a week, it led to 194 drug-offence arrests.

More than £400,000 of suspected narcotics and more than £130,000 in cash was seized, along with an array of weapons including Tasers, knives and machetes.

Around 55 properties were raided and 400 major drug lines disrupted.
It is vital and life-saving work.

Drug deaths have risen to a record high in Bristol, with the most recent government statistics showing there were 147 drug-poisoning deaths between 2018 and 2020, the highest since local records began in 2001.

Just two years ago the city — which has 41 areas in the most deprived ten per cent in England — was dubbed the “cocaine capital of Europe”.

And as Britain emerges from the pandemic, the dangerous drug scene across the South West shows no signs of slowing down.

In Bristol the drug market is estimated to be worth around £108million a year.

Joshua Torrance, a criminology teacher at the University of Bristol and an expert in drug policy, says: “Cocaine is increasingly popular. We’ve seen a drop in bulk price due to Albanian gangs.

“There is also ease of availability. It’s certain that if you order delivery of a gram of coke and a pizza, the coke will come first.”

Some dealers have been reportedly selling crack for as little as £5 a “rock”.

Peter Collins, a drug expert at Avon and Somerset Police, explains: “The pandemic had an effect on drugs within Bristol, South Gloucestershire and Somerset with uncertainty around supply routes into the UK.

This saw a drop in purity of heroin and crack cocaine, which was a risk to the life of people who use heroin.”

Inspector Chris Green, who is leading Operation Scorpion in Bristol, says there are 5,000 problematic drug users in the city living with different levels of addiction.

As part of Operation Scorpion, police also made more than 320 visits  to vulnerable people’s addresses and conducted nearly 50 educational trips to schools, youth clubs and colleges to talk about  grooming into drug gangs.

Drug crackdowns like the one witnessed in Bristol take months to plan and it is dangerous work.

Last year there were almost 37,000 assaults on police officers in England and Wales, including British Transport Police. In Bristol alone, around six officers are assaulted a day.

*Name has been changed