BRITAIN IN GRIP OF DRUGS CULTURE

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain is in a drugs frenzy with an epidemic of stories
about high-flying celebrities and low-life addicts laying bare the extent of
the craze.

To hear the tabloid press tell it, top sportsmen regularly snort cocaine,
posh society is awash with pills and powders while recreational users have
even penetrated the BBC. From a celebrated novelist who took heroin in the
washroom of the prime minister's plane to the pop star who compares getting
high to drinking tea, drugs are
omnipresent.

"Celebrities using drugs just reflect the rest of society. Drugs are very
much part and parcel of youth culture and are likely to remain so," said
Mike Goodman, director of Release, a national drugs and legal advice charity.

Heroin use is rising among the young and poor as prices drop while cocaine
is as common as Chianti in many professional circles, cash-rich and weary
from the working week.

The Office for National Statistics estimates Britain spends up to $16
billion on illegal drugs each year, with some 300 million drug deals
believed to take place in London alone.

"What we are finding is the normalization of drug-taking," said Keith
Hellawell, the official charged with spearheading the government's drive
against drugs, who released his first report on the epidemic in May.

Be it designers dressing waifish models in "heroin chic" or advertisers
selling mundane household products with trippy imagery, narcotics are
entrenched in daily life.

"Drugs are all over and they're here to stay. It's just irresponsible of
all these celebrities to get caught," Lotte McGrand of Dazed and Confused, a
magazine with the pulse of youth culture, said. "Drugs are so common it
would be even hipper for kids not to take them."

Social Trends, an annual survey by the government, says eight per cent of
12-year-olds, 30 per cent of 14-year-olds and 40 per cent of 16-year-olds
have tried drugs at least once. Teenage ecstasy deaths barely warrant a
mention in a jaded press and Britain's thriving club and music industries
weave drugs ever tighter into the fabric of youth culture.

Next month sees the release of Human Traffic, an insider's view of drugs and
clubs in Wales touted as this summer's hit film just as Trainspotting stole
headlines with its gritty portrayal of life among Scotland's junkies.

"People in Europe are much more fearful about drugs, but in Britain, drugs
are all over and are out there every weekend. You might be scared this is
the last drug you'll ever take, but people still want to run the risk,"
McGrand said.

A study of all 15 European Union members shows three times as many young
Britons had experimented with the rave drug ecstasy than their counterparts
in France or Germany. Young Britons were also much more likely to have used
hallucinogens, amphetamines and solvents, according to the European
Monitoring Center for Drugs.

This month Tom Parker Bowles, godson of Prince Charles and a friend to
Britain's young princes, was caught in a classic "honey trap" when he
allegedly offered to buy cocaine for a reporter posing as a debutante at the
Cannes film festival.

Days later, the captain of England's rugby team was forced to resign when he
too was lured into boasts of drug use and dealing by an undercover tabloid
reporter.

Drugs have even invaded the soccer field with Liverpool striker Robbie
Fowler answering taunts from the stands by pretending to snort cocaine off
the goal line. A children's television host, a popular actor, a BBC disc
jockey - the list of alleged users fingered in the press grows ever longer.

"It's deplorable. It's giving an abysmal, appalling example to young
people. There's no glamour in drug-taking. It wrecks lives, it wrecks
health and ruins families," Jack Cunningham, the minister coordinating
government drugs strategy, said.

Last week the government unveiled tough new targets to crack down on drug
abuse, emphasizing treatment over punishment. It wants to cut the number of
young people using heroin or cocaine by a quarter by 2005 and a half by
2008, saying addicts are responsible for 30 per cent of all crime.

Few experts see a quick fix as long as drugs keep growing purer, cheaper and
ever more prevalent. But Cunningham says there is no choice.

"We simply have to get to grips with it.

"Whether or not it leads to an epidemic is too early to say, but it's the
situation we are facing."