‘These people are broken’: Why the UK’s war on drugs has failed

There was a time when drug use in the UK was not considered a matter for the police and judges, but for the doctor. Then it adopted the US’s punitive approach to addiction.

Pat Hudson never leaves her house without a syringe of Naloxone. She will not be needing it for herself, but she wants to be ready for any emergency on the street. Naloxone is injected into the muscle and blocks the effect of opioids: If somebody has taken an overdose of heroin, it can save their life. “It’s a bit late, of course,” she says: Hudson’s 32-year-old adopted son, Kevin Lane, died in 2017 after taking heroin. Hudson, 72, and her husband, Tony Lane, 83, are both academics and live near the town of Carmarthen in the west of Wales in the United Kingdom. She is a professor emeritus of economic history and still teaches classes at Cardiff University. For a long time, she did not know much about heroin. It was only when Kevin was in his mid-20s that the drug started to play a big role in her life.