Welcome to Wolverhampton? Anger over BBC 3 documentary Drugs Map of Britain
Drug addicts brawling in a city centre street, smoking joints outside the Darlington Street Methodist Church before returning to the needle-strewn tented village where they live.
Welcome to Wolverhampton – a city in the midst of a 'legal high' drug epidemic, according to a new documentary.
Wolverhampton: Getting Off Mamba tells the story of a 27-year-old homeless man and his addiction to Black Mamba – a synthetic form of cannabis that programme makers say is flooding the streets of the city.
The drug can be bought for as little as £10 and is labelled as worse than heroin by one addict featured in the programme. It marks the latest BBC3 documentary to focus on the city's criminal underbelly, following on from last year's series on Wolves' football hooligan gangs.
MORE: Your views on Wolverhampton and BBC 3's Drugs Map of Britain
Councillor Lawrence said: "There is a tendency at the moment to try and put Wolverhampton down, which personally I find really annoying.
"For people who don't know the city it is bound to give an off-putting message, which is completely inaccurate.
"A lot of it is scaremongering, particularly when you consider that violent crime in the city centre is coming down."
The city's former mayor Councillor Milkinder Jaspal said: "The people who make these programmes are usually outsiders who have little or no concern for how well the city is doing. They only want to highlight problems without looking at solutions."
A BBC spokesman said: "Drugs Map of Britain is a new BBC Three series that looks at cities across the UK where the drugs local service providers identified there were issues.
"Wolverhampton is the first film in the series to coincide with new legal highs legislation which was due to be passed this week."
