ImagesBrighton pictures of the week 2-8-2004

IMAGESBRIGHTON photography by david gray
	D R U G S G R A F F I T I
	P I C T U R E S O F T H E W E E K 2 - 8 - 2 0 0 4

This week's pictures are about drugs graffiti in Brighton. After the more cheerful recent subjects of Paris cafes and the Kent countryside, this is inevitably a bit of a downer. No apology need be made however, since Brighton has again been in the news for having the highest drug death rate in England. Homeless young men, sadly, are the main casualties and they often die because of the dangers of using street drugs. This is a way of life, and death, that also leaves its mark in graffiti, some of it in grim celebration of the use of drugs as an escape route. There's a long history to all this, of course, and it would be stupid and unrealistic to deny the many attractions of mind and mood altering substances. But the sadness of so much contemporary drug use is the despair and desperation that leads to it.

Blocked-up doorway, Brighton, May 2004 (image 2510-3)

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