After 12 drug-related deaths since December, Barrow is now Britain’s most infamous “brown town”. A place that was once dubbed England’s Chicago because its economy was growing so fast is now synonymous with heroin. “There have been drugs deaths elsewhere in the county, but not to the degree we’ve seen in Barrow. In Blackpool, the town that has the highest heroin death rate, the figure rises to 14 in 100,000. But the shifting zeitgeist is unlikely to offer much succour to Barrow or any other of Britain’s brown towns.

Source: The Guardian April 28, 2018 19:52 UTC