Avowals of reformed drug dealer

When Australian Border Police investigators noticed his crime syndicates was adopting new ways to import drugs rather than just concealing substances in shipping containers, he knew his luxurious lifestyle was coming to a juddering halt. Born 31 years ago in Newcastle, a harbour city in the Australian state of New South Wales, his rise and fall is one hell of a story.When he was just 13, he joined a gang in Stockton and began using and dealing on the streets and he was earning around $7,000 a week before he landed in jail at the age of 18. When he was released, he told me how meeting one of his former fellow gang member led him to slip back into the life he was in before arrest. “I was a drug dealer for five years. My best friend died when he was 15 years old. At 18, I was almost gunned down. "Things just went from bad to worse, and, by the age of 23, I had eight elementary school friends dead." His arrest case as there was a new breed of drugs on the streets of Newcastle, and authorities admit they needed to deal with drug dealers.Police were facing a new evolution in the drug war, as a system of established syndicates was joined by a wave of guerrilla drug manufacturers. He narrated how backyard "cooks" were using instructions downloaded from the internet to invent new chemical stimulants that were then flooding a cashed-up market in Newcastle, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra and Gold Coast.To the drug dealers like him, they had no idea what the effect will be as the physical and mental health impacts of these new chemical cocktails sink in among the consumers. Admitting that new designer drugs he sold contained unidentified combinations of chemicals that were never before been seen or tested, his focus was money and by the time he was jailed, designer drugs made up almost half of all the drugs on Port Stephens, City of Lake Macquarie, City of Cessnock, City of Maitland and City of Newcastle streets.As he was undergoing rehabilitation, he suffered an overdose, he swore he was ready to  leave a life of gangs, drugs and jail behind. So he returned to the hood he had been staying as a young child.

"I wept, a broken bloke. I said to myself, if there’s someone out there, make yourself real to me. Please just give me a help or something. "The next day, I was walking through the neck of the woods streets where some middle aged women were handing out leaflets, telling people about drugs and a woman gave me a flyer, and the flyer read, 'if you're looking for a help on overcoming drugs problems, here it is'." That was seven years ago. Now, he spends his time mentoring others who are experiencing a similar ordeal. “I show them that there is support, there is help, but it comes back down to you,” the bloke said. “I can show you the exit door from drugs, but you have to walk through it. Those that have walked through it have come out great on the other end." The years of his life behind bars taught him a lot and he said seeing fellow youngsters who are homeless and addicted to drugs within a few weeks of their release makes breaks his heart. Luckily, for him he has a job and had not used drugs for six and half years. "For a long time, I've never experienced quality life, true life,” he said. “You know, being in a place like prison, every prisoner has hidden agenda, there was no genuine love, no genuine friendship, until I came out.” He said his biggest worry now is that most of drug users in Australia have transferred their habits from expensive drugs to easily and cheaply manufactured from recipes off the internet.They are made in clandestine laboratories set up in backyard sheds and rental properties, using fast-track formulas of explosive and toxic chemicals to create the drugs quickly and cheaply.Recently, he has seen proliferation in the number of these cases, where it is a shorter manufacturing process that uses a complex range of chemicals. As long as maker has the precursor pseudoephedrine, which are easy to buy across the counter, and equipment from a hardware store, drug business will continue to thrive.Unlike before, those kind of drugs are scary since they are derived off backyard recipes ripped off the internet which can cause a whole heap of problems. When I asked him whether coppers during his drug dealing time were effective, he said Australian Police face the difficult job of balancing legitimate community needs for available pharmaceuticals, such as cold and flu tablets that contain pseudoephedrine, against tough measures needed to target criminals like he was in the past. He believes it's a complex scenario even though the primary role of coppers is supply reduction.As demand continues, he said police have to go beyond just the one role from countering emerging drugs coming into existence to dismantling backyard laboratories. This article first appeared here