It will come as no surprise to anyone living or working in Blackburn that there is a large Asian population in the town. Some 25,000 people have their origins in the Indian sub-continent. My work as a Police Inspector is to develop the police response to the particular needs of the Asian community.

The last few years have seen a rise in drug use in the town, and this rise has been mirrored in the Asian community. I visited Pakistan in June 1997 to make a preliminary study of some of the drug prevention methods in the country and to sample a little of the life.

There are about 130 million people living in Pakistan, most of them are very poor by our standards. The cities are very crowded and motor vehicles form a substantial noise and smoke pollution problem. Transport, on the whole, is very good with frequent rail and air services between all the major cities.

Drugs are a big problem in Pakistan, with heroin being grown in the Pakistan/Afghanistan border region and being freely available all over the country.

I was able to visit two rehabilitation clinics in Islamabad while I was there, one private and the other religious. Both clinics operated with about 20 patients who were predominantly referred by their parents. The patients were suffering from a variety of drug related problems but mainly from heroin addiction, with an average age of 35 years.

The heroin was being taken orally via smoking in cigarettes, or inhaling the fumes from burning the powder on silver foil. There was some evidence of needle use and also of cutting the limbs and sprinkling the drug into the bleeding wound.

The addicts were treated with homeopathic drugs and kept in a lock-up 24 hours a day for up to 6 weeks until they dried out. It is interesting to note that Methadone is not available in Pakistan and was seen by the doctors to be a Western drug that made matters worse. Evidence of re-addiction or relapse was not available.

I visited schools, colleges, clinics and prisons and, despite being a British Police Officer, I was made welcome and greeted with great regard.

People in Pakistan were kind and helpful, and spent a great deal of time and effort to look after me.

Inspector Andrew R. Pratt