As stated in the introduction, an epidemic is defined as a ‘disease, normally absent or infrequent in a population but liable to outbreaks of greatly increased frequency and severity, temporarily widespread.’ Before looking to apply the model of Becker’s, it is important to establish whether or not there is indeed a heroin problem in the town of study. If there was not a problem then the application of Becker’s model would be worthless.

A number of methodological approaches were adopted to learn the extent of the heroin Problem, of which the first was the content analysis of the local newspaper. Content analysis can be defined as. . .

(Krippendorff 1980)

The idea behind this approach was to asses the extent that heroin related articles had risen over the past seven years, covering the 1998 period when Keith Halliwell stated that there was a ‘heroin epidemic.’ By going through each newspaper and counting articles that contained the word heroin one would be left with each of the seven years showing the number of heroin related articles in the paper. The implication would be that any increase in the number of heroin related articles could indicate an increase in the use of heroin. A typical example of the type of article counted would be the court reports, whereby an increase would indicate an increase not only in the number of heroin users, but in the detection and prosecution rates also.

The results were as follows. . . .

A graph representation can be seen below right, but what was discovered was a huge rise in the number of articles, peaking at 83 in the year 2000, an average of nearly two articles a week.  What this suggested was that from the end of 1997, the number of heroin related incidents dramatically increased over a relatively short period of time. Indeed the number of articles in 2001 shows that the number this year may be higher still.

                       Perhaps more significantly, these alarming figures did not include those articles that may have ‘implied’ that heroin was the drug used, for example there were instances when the term ‘drug                        addict’ or ‘junkie’ were used, but were not included because they did not make explicit references to heroin. On this basis the actual number of articles may have been far higher than this €                        study indicates.

When we look at these two graphs we can see a remarkable similarity between them, although the one on the left, the schematic model, has been extracted from a text (Parker etal 1988) and the one on the right is the number of heroin related articles in the local paper. The schematic model (Hunt and Chambers 1976) shows that a heroin epidemic has a fixed course (7 years), and shows that from a ‘stable, endemic baseline’ (years 1 & 2) the number of new cases of heroin use in a community increases rapidly for four years, before peaking at ten times the level, and then drops sharply to the initial level during years six and seven. 

The model on the right, constructed by myself, shows striking similarities to this model, and may be a useful comparison in establishing the existence and course of a heroin epidemic. However, where my model will differ is through the projection into the year 2001, instead of decreasing after a four-year period, as Hunt & Chambers model would suggest, there is actually a strong possibility that there is going to be a further increase in the number of articles, and thus heroin use.

Drug arrests were also on the increase. In 1996 150 people were arrested in the North Kesteven area, which is XXXXXX and its surrounding area. In 1997 the number rose to 213, in 1998, 290 and in 1999 the figure was well over 300. Such figures come off the back of numerous Journal headlines (in 1995 & 96) stating that the town police had ‘escaped cuts’ (Feb. 10^th, 1995), had a ‘£1.8 billion boost’ (June 16^th 1995), they had proposed a ‘partnership with the public against crime’ (September 22^nd 1995), CCTV had been given the ‘go ahead’ (Jan 19^th 1996) and the police were getting new grants to tackle drugs (Aug 16^th 1996). So although drug arrests had increased, it would seem that the intensity of police actions (selective policing?) and their detection powers had also increased. This may have had some bearing on the number of heroin users arrested, and consequently on the number of articles appearing in the paper.

A small-scale questionnaire was also produced for the three mainstream schools in XXXXXX, with a view to ascertain the percentage of youngsters who had been offered heroin, and those that had actually taken it. The schools were mixed, and located at very different areas in the town, and so the cross section of children would have been extremely diverse, and thus validity improved. The results showed that, overall, 10% of 14-16 year olds (222 children questioned in total) had been offered heroin, and although around 4% admitted to taking it, the number may be much higher.

This quantitative approach strongly insinuated that at an empirical level, there was indeed a huge problem with heroin. The sharp increase in articles, the steady increase of police arrests for drug offences, and the high proportion of young people that were offered the drug shows the increase in heroin to be hugely evident.

However, where the weaknesses in quantitative approach may be located, they can be counteracted by the qualitative data to support these empirical findings, and the belief that a heroin epidemic has manifested itself in the town.

Primarily there are the views of both the government agency representatives and the actual heroin users themselves, views from people who may have contradictory beliefs surrounding the issues of heroin, but who share the same views in terms of the existence of a heroin problem. With the exception of the media agent, the other agency representatives all agreed that there had been a huge increase in the number of heroin addicts in this town over the past 5 years (AA Pp 5-13). It would seem that although they do not like the term ‘epidemic,’ they all suggested that there was a very real heroin problem in the town. Collectively, they also estimated the number of heroin users in the town to be between 1200-1500, which equates to around 3.9% of the overall population.

The heroin addict, user, and the ex-addict, share similar views to their agency counterparts, all stating that they had seen a sharp rise in the number of heroin users, with the heroin addict interviewed believing that the number has increased ‘tenfold.’

The final piece of evidence of a qualitative nature was the participant observation carried out by the researcher himself, who witnessed the number of people who were buying heroin from one runner in one day (See AB Pp.  ) The runner was selling around about £1000 worth of heroin each day, and when you consider the number of dealers in the town (around six main dealers known to the police), and the number of people they have running for them, the figures are incredibly high.

Essentially the combination of both the qualitative and quantitative data available strongly suggested that there was certainly a problem in the town, a problem that was out of control, but whether or not it was of an epidemic proportion remained highly subjective. However, in conjunction with the definition offered earlier in the study, the support offered by all sets of data strongly suggested that the heroin problem had indeed reached epidemic proportions, particularly through the discovery of around 10% of 14-16 year olds being offered the drug.

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