Festival Drugs: Meet the Dealers, a three-part investigative documentary produced by BBC Three, goes undercover to infiltrate criminal organizations that routinely prey on young festival-goers.
Early in the first installment, The Party Traffickers, the filmmakers enter the home of a dealer who specializes in party drugs. Covering his face, the dealer discusses the intricacies of his operation, how he exports supplies abroad and his penchant for mixing MDMA with rat poison to keep costs down. The dealer later installed a body camera to record how he managed to sell the drugs outside the UK.
In Episode 2, documentary host Livvy Haydock scours various music festival venues to determine how these illegal substances are being sold and distributed, as well as the level of vigilance or complicity of security forces. Licensed festival security guards who became whistleblowers for the cameras explained how these “protectors” were often paid to look the other way or actively involved in drug sales. Even off-duty security forces are hampered by a checkpoint policy that is all too easy to compromise.
The final installment in the series, Deadly Pushers, provides a comprehensive overview of the entire well-oiled operation – from booking music festival tickets to packing drugs to arriving at venues unnoticed. We learn about the scourge of the super-potent drugs that have taken over the festival circuit; they have killed nearly 100 people so far in the UK alone. Associated with this growing party drug industry is an increase in gang violence.
In Festival Drugs: Meet the Dealers, Haydock finds himself in one dangerous scenario after another in order to uncover a major crime. Given evidence of drug paraphernalia in every neighborhood she and her staff visited, drug dealers could face life in prison if the police got involved. Given the enormous risk of exposure, the extent to which they allowed Heidecker and her camera access is staggering. It’s a rare glimpse into an underworld hidden from plain sight.
