METH discovered in Middlesborough earlier this year

METH discovered in Middlesborough earlier this year, Karl Sheldon, of the drugs charity Addaction, said: “It is going to have a wide-reaching effect on families and communities because it is easily produced, highly addictive and cheaper than cocaine.” Richard Cazaly, the man named by police as responsible for the stabbing of Abigail Witchalls last year, was a meth user.

Meth may not yet be a problem on the scale of other drugs in Britain — we are the biggest European users of cocaine — but it is gaining a foothold. And it is meth’s meteoric and disastrous spread overseas that is causing alarm here. Meth use in America has exploded since the late 1990s and the scale of the problem is startling. An estimated 12.3 million Americans had tried the drug by 2003 and in the same year more than 10,000 meth laboratories were found by police. Deborah Durkin, of the Minnesota Department of Health, says that in her state many cities went from “Not a problem” to “Help!” in six months to a year.