Pubdate: Mon, 23 Oct 2000 Source: Inquirer (PA) Copyright: 2000 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc. Contact: 400 N. Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19101 Website: http://www.phillynews.com/inq/ Forum: http://interactive.phillynews.com/talk-show/ Author: Andrea Gerlin FOR POST-INDUSTRIAL SCOTS, A HEROIN SCOURGE It Is The Hard Drug Of Choice In Glasgow. The Addiction Rate There Is Higher Than In The U.S. GLASGOW, Scotland - One by one, the young addicts filed into the small, spare room at the Drug Crisis Center, their faces drawn and their limbs withered. They deposited used needles in plastic containers and received new ones from a staff member. Then they headed back to the streets to buy more heroin and shoot it into their emaciated bodies. This constant, daily parade of more than 100 addicts to the center's needle-exchange program is testimony to Scotland's heroin epidemic. This former industrial city 40 miles west of Edinburgh counts an estimated 10,000 heroin addicts among its 600,000 inhabitants. It loses about 70 to overdoses each year, a rate nearly 10 times that of the rest of Britain. "Drugs are everywhere in Glasgow," said George Hunter, manager of the needle-exchange program. Heroin overwhelmingly is Glasgow's hard drug of choice, its use more widespread here than in large American cities. According to the University of Glasgow Center for Drug Misuse Research, heroin was detected in 31 percent of urine samples taken from 280 Scottish jail inmates interviewed during a study last year. That figure was higher than the rate in 35 U.S. cities in which the same research was done: It was 27 percent in Chicago, 18 percent in New York, 17 percent in Philadelphia, and 6.5 percent in Los Angeles. Many Scots were shocked when the results of the study hit the headlines last month. "I would never have guessed we would be up there," said Neil McKeganey, a professor of social sciences who directed the study. "Out of these areas . . . most people would think Glasgow would be somewhere a long way down." McKeganey said he could only speculate about why so many Glaswegians were drawn to heroin, which depresses functioning of the central nervous system. "Maybe it's the western Scottish psyche," he said. If dealers were supplying another drug in large amounts, he said, perhaps the city would be plagued by something else. More likely is a natural shift to more powerful substances after decades of alcohol abuse in working-class areas of a city that has seen the death of such industries as shipbuilding, steel and mining. Rosie, 22, who was at the crisis center to begin methadone treatment, offered an explanation based on experience. A prostitute since age 15, she grew up fatherless in a poor suburb of Glasgow. "I was doing it to feel better," she said of her two-year habit. "Every single one of my mates have got a problem with heroin. They've been treated badly in their life at some point, and this is how they block it out." With a missing front tooth as evidence, she grimly recalled that the man with whom she had been living regularly beat her. The abuse drove her to inject heroin 10 times a day, at a cost of about $15 a hit, financed through prostitution. Last month, Rosie moved onto the streets and disintegrated emotionally. A three-week stay in the drug crisis center's 12-bed residential unit helped to stabilize her. She returned home to live with her mother, and hopes to move into a house of her own. Glasgow's heroin addicts run the gamut from pubescent to geriatric, according to drug center workers. The city's youngest known heroin victim was Allan Harper, a 13-year-old who died of an overdose in 1998. He lived in a housing project in Easterhouse, a poor area known locally as "smack city." The police force for the Strathclyde region, which includes Glasgow, has investigated episodes in which elementary school children have been found with the substance in their bookbags. "A 10-year-old brought it to school and said, 'Please, take this away from my parents,' " Detective Sgt. Brian Dodd said. Hunter, of the needle-exchange program, said the Glasgow Drug Crisis Center was seeing three generations of a local family who were hooked on heroin. He and others in the field described heroin users as predominantly single men 18 to 35 and school dropouts from high-unemployment neighborhoods in the north and east of the city. They begin using the drug as teenagers, and their "heroin careers" typically last 10 years. Little can scare addicts away from heroin, including the threat of death, said crisis center worker Elise Duffy. She grew up in Gorbals, a down-and-out working-class neighborhood not far from the center, where heroin has been a longstanding scourge. "A lot of my friends did drugs," she said as she took and handed out needles. "All of them are dead now." Not even the risk of death from a bizarre bacterial outbreak that surfaced in Glasgow last spring could dampen addicts' demand for heroin. Needle users in Glasgow - and later in Dublin, Ireland, and in Liverpool and Manchester, England - began showing up at hospitals and in doctors' offices with severe swelling and abcesses at injection sites, caused by infections from contaminated heroin. The pathogen believed to have been involved, a bacterium identified as Clostridium novyi that is found in soil, produced a toxin that seeped into the victims' bloodstreams. Antibiotics couldn't halt its progression, requiring amputations and leading to organ failure and death in some cases. Laurence Gruer, a consultant in public health medicine for the Greater Glasgow Health Board, said 60 heroin users in the area developed the infection during the mysterious three-month outbreak, and 23 died. "What we've pieced together strongly suggests that it came from one common source," Gruer said. "But this is not like a problem with powdered milk. You can't go along to the factory" for an inspection. "There are no bar codes on the product." According to a report issued by Britain's National Criminal Intelligence Service earlier this year, most of the heroin imported to the country originates in the opium-poppy fields of southwest Asia, principally Afghanistan. From there it goes through Iran, Turkey and the Balkans to Belgium and the Netherlands. The drug enters Britain in vehicles and freight containers, bound for markets in London and southeast England. Couriers then transport it to Scotland in cars and on trains. Law enforcement officers say that mobile telephones - especially those that run on pay-as-you-go cards - have made it easier for street dealers to distribute the drug. Occasionally, Scottish police will intercept a large vessel carrying a shipment of heroin along Scotland's vast shoreline, which, because of its many small inlets, is longer than the entire coast of France. Last year, law enforcement agencies recovered $55 million in heroin throughout Strathclyde, including one raid that netted $45 million alone. Strathclyde police have seized $3.5 million worth of heroin from 2,765 people since April. But even last year's raids did not put a dent in the availability of the drug on the street, suggesting a large market and a sufficient surplus to plug the gap. After news of the bust spread, the Glasgow Drug Crisis Center anticipated that scores of clients would be unable to obtain fixes, and show up in withdrawal. The center put on extra staff, who it turned out were unneeded. "The bust didn't make one bit of difference in supply," said Andrew Horne, an official at the crisis center. McKeganey, the social science professor, estimates that heroin addiction costs Glasgow $800 million a year from drug-related crime. A survey of 168 local users conducted in 1997 found that they committed an average 26 offenses each month, primarily thefts, to support habits that typically cost $75 a day. Law enforcement officials acknowledge the enormous problem they face. Matthew Hamilton, national drugs coordinator of the Scottish DEA, said it would take at least 10 years to eliminate the problem of heroin. "There certainly is no quick fix," he said. - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart