There is a joke in the town of Felixstowe, Suffolk about drug smuggling.
“They say drugs come into the UK at Felixstowe, travel around the country, getting stomped on by everyone, and then end up back on the streets here,” explained an individual previously involved in the trade who spoke to the Express on the condition of anonymity.
It’s an observation with more than a grain of truth.
Back in 2019, Felixstowe broke the record for the UK’s biggest-ever heroin seizure with 1.3 tonnes of the substance found concealed in towels and bathrobes on a container ship.
People had barely a year to marvel at the hundreds of bags spread across tarpaulin when a similar quantity of the drug was discovered hidden in rice at the port.
Around £140million’s-worth of cocaine turned up in the back of a container at the shipping terminal in 2022 taking the total value of drugs seized in Felixstowe, for the last four years alone, to not far off half a billion pounds.
As you travel around the town, which also features a popular sandy beach and pier, you never really escape the blue cranes that pull thousands of metal containers from the many giant ships every day.
Traditionally it’s also been the main source of work for people in the town, a pair of long-time locals and heroin addicts told Express.co.uk.
“Basically, you either work on the dock or at the old people’s homes around the seafront, there are loads because people retire here” they added.
“I used to work in the port offices,” added another, “before I started taking heroin.”
They explained that like many seaside towns, drugs have been a part of the fabric of Felixstowe for a long time.
Both started using in their youth but are now in middle age. They are trying to manage their addiction, but it can be a challenge.
“We still smoke heroin every now and then. But we don’t lie about it. We’re on a methadone square and do methadone every day, tomorrow morning we’ve got an appointment with our drug workers,” one added.
As the previously mentioned joke indicates, the destination for the drugs authorities find in Felixstowe is normally some other part of the country.
Whether it is the Midlands or North of England, the organised crime groups being handed 100-year prison sentences for smuggling to Felixstowe live far away.
This has meant the way, over the years, drugs have come back to the town is through gangs from cities like London and Birmingham. Sometimes their passage is direct, other times routed through nearby Ipswich; a place with a long history of drug abuse and a well-known red-light district of sex workers.
But, unlike other seaside towns where the sale of narcotics is driving violence and disorder, according to those with knowledge of the trade, while there are still many people who are addicted, things have become quieter in recent years.
“Users down don’t graft like ones in other places robbing or stabbing people for their drugs,” they said, “there’s not crime like there was before. The drug issue really dictates how towns, especially quiet towns like this, operate.”
They said gangs from urban areas will still occasionally target Felixstowe, but the warfare which certain areas on the south coast have reported is not evident.
This is not to say the issue of drugs in the wider area has disappeared. The most recently available data on deaths from drug misuse show 16 people in East Suffolk lost their lives in 2021, that’s higher than nearby Ipswich and all but two of London’s boroughs for the same period.
Changes to the drug issue can also be explained by other shifts in the make-up of Felxistowe.
Located around two hours train ride from London, the Suffolk town is increasingly becoming a location people priced out of the capital’s property market are moving to. A trend aided by the revolutionary impact of Covid-19, which has prompted more employers to offer flexible hours and remote working.
“Felixstowe is a bit of a hidden gem and what happened, certainly over Covid, was that lockdown changed people’s working patterns and changed what was a priority and wanting to be outside. So since the pandemic took place the market shot up,” a local estate agent, Charlie Papworth, told MyLondon this year.
“I think one of the main attractions really is being on the coastline, being by the seaside.”
The town was also singled out in The Sunday Times ‘best places to live by the sea in the UK’ as a great place to find a bargain, although the description was slightly unflattering.
According to the paper: “Felixstowe may not have the cachet of [nearby] Aldeburgh and Southwold, its highfalutin neighbours up the coast, but there are good reasons why the coastal connoisseur should look closely at this oft-overlooked resort.
“Obviously it’s cheaper, much cheaper, with good four-bedroom properties going for about £650,000 compared with £1 million or so in Southwold. You get less swank for your money here — the town centre is on the shabby side of chic, but there’s a definite sense of a town on the up.”
Reflective of the town’s recent fashionable rise are a number of major new housing developments.
Some, like the plan to build 310 homes in a nearby Suffolk village, are being justified by the growing population of Felixstowe and the lack of available properties.
A symbolic demonstration of this creeping gentrification can be found at the town’s police station. Closed since 2016, is it in the process of being transformed into a restaurant, shop and nine flats.
In the social housing blocks on the edge of town where Express.co.uk met the two heroin users it’s harder to see the evidence of these changes.
“My opinion is this place is either old people waiting to die or young people who ain’t got nothing to do,” one of them remarked.
The other disagreed, to an extent, “I don’t think it’s that bad of a place to live, it’s quite nice, apart from here, round here’s a sh*thole,”.
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