"People are dying like flies. It's endless, endless." Jay, who doesn't want to give his full name, is despondent. He has been sleeping rough up and down the UK for years and is back in Neath town centre after five years away. He says the town is different than he remembered, worse, "crumbling" under the weight of homelessness and drug use.
In some respects he is not wrong. In 2017, and in 2021, respectively, 25 people lost their lives as a result of drug poisoning in Neath Port Talbot, according to data from the Office for National Statistics. There was a fall in drugs deaths during the pandemic but the town's problems have not gone away.
While on paper no more people than five years ago are dying of drug poisoning in the local authority, the type of drugs and their impacts have changed. On the Tuesday afternoon we visit Neath town cente, each person we spoke to said the banning of legal highs has meant drugs such as spice is harder to obtain and that heroin has now replaced it as their drug of choice.
