TBH I have not heard of this – BTW I am British Asian and of SE Asian ancestry, but English by birth and from SE London, and it was my ancestors as immigrants to London who set up the first lot 😉
TBH whilst opiates will always come from Afghanistan and similar areas, what has probably really happened is social/racial tensions have increased in the last 10 years due to the economic depression, so that a group of young males, mostly Asians gathering in one place to consume drugs who would have been ignored a few years ago in more optimistic times are now noticed and viewed more judgementally (especially with links between illegal opiate use and extremism/terrorism being talked up). What I do think is happening is a rise in opiate use amongst all ethnic groups present in the UK, but they are not too fussy if it is raw opium, street heroin or diverted American pharmaceuticals. Any rise in importing of raw opium might be more caused by controls on precursor chemicals for heroin processing even in foreign nations, but these controls happening because some of the chemicals can be (and also are) used for making explosives used in IEDs (there is a war on after all).. This, added to the mainstream media’s reporting of “drug dens” plus recent political and economic issues presents a perception that “opium dens” are on the increase – however they were always there and no one really cared about them until now.
This was in fact exactly what happened with the Chinese / Malaysians in the early 20th century, they certainly did have areas where they gathered to take opiates which had been brought in via shipping / trade routes, but even the Police (who weren’t half as PC as today) accepted that by and large their activities, although illegal, weren’t causing a great deal of problems, and that the amount of such places was grossly exaggerated, whilst the local English population felt that the authorities weren’t taking enough action on “misbehaviour by foreigners”. There weren’t even as many Chinese or Malaysians (or people from the wider Asian subcontinent) as people thought there were in London, in comparison with the late 20th century or today.
History has a habit of repeating itself 😉
