GLASGOW - Every Friday for the past two months, Peter Krykant has parked his white van on Parnie Street in central Glasgow, around the corner from a games shop and several art galleries, and waited for people to come by and inject illegal drugs.

Inside the van are two seats and two tables, each with a stainless steel tray and hypodermic needles, as well as several biohazard trash cans. The van is also equipped with naloxone, the medication used to reverse an opioid overdose, and a defibrillator. (There are Covid-19 safety precautions, too: hand sanitizer and a box of masks.)

[continues 1349 words]

Dopey cops warning shopkeepers about the law on cannabis pipes are directing them to a website which campaigns to legalise the drug.

The gaffe by Strathclyde Police comes after a Glasgow trader had UKP 3000-worth of stock seized.

The haul included pipes, water pipes known as bongs, and magazines outlining cultivation of the controlled substance.

A trader asked Strathclyde police for advice on selling his products - and was referred to a website which sets out the Misuse of Drugs Act.

[continues 192 words]

Former Bay City Rollers boss Tam Paton's record fine for drug offences has started a legal row.

Prosecutors say the pop promoter turned property tycoon should not have been ordered to pay a UKP 200,000 penalty before they had been given time to go through his books in search of possible profits from drug-dealing.

Lord Advocate Colin Boyd QC, Scotland's top law officer, is appealing against the way the fine was imposed by judge Roderick Macdonald QC.

[continues 479 words]

Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum Councillor Says

Residents of Kirkcudbright have been told to wake up to the escalating drugs problem facing them.

A stark picture of a growing drugs culture affecting all walks of life has been painted by a community councillor and backed up by her fellow members.

Councillors were also told by community police officer Terry Butcher that it was time for the public to start sticking their heads above the parapet and support the police to rid the town of the growing menace.

[continues 711 words]

The massive heroin haul was made on the A96 Aberdeen to Inverness road at the Airport roundabout just outside Bucksburn.

The success came just three weeks after 1 million UKP of drugs were recovered at the Bridge of Dee.

A 35-year-old North-east man was due to appear in private at Aberdeen Sheriff Court today in connection with yesterday's haul. Drug squad and traffic police made the find when they swooped on a car shortly before midday yesterday.

[continues 197 words]

POLICE have launched a website to warn parents and children of the dangers of crack cocaine following a dramatic rise in its use.

The taking of crack and cocaine powder has increased by more than 200 per cent in Scotland in the past five years.

Police claim some clubbers in Edinburgh are now using the drugs instead of Ecstasy.

Officers and drug agencies are becoming increasingly alarmed at the number of young people taking crack, the more addictive, smokeable form of cocaine.

[continues 475 words]

THE Scottish Executive launched its latest drugs initiative yesterday, targeting the families of abusers.

A two-day conference in Glasgow played host to more than 100 people in a move which aims to focus on the problems experienced by those living with an abuser.

The national event, hosted by Argyll and Clyde Alcohol and Drug Action Team, is the first to take into account the experiences of family members rather than professionals.

Recent statistics revealed there were an estimated 55,800 problematic drug users in Scotland. The research also indicated that drug misuse affected communities throughout Scotland as a whole and not simply in urban areas.

[continues 225 words]

PRESCRIBING heroin on the NHS may be a "necessary evil" to tackle Scotland's worsening drug addiction problem, campaigners said yesterday.

Alastair Ramsay, the director of Scotland Against Drugs, said giving GPs the authority to prescribe heroin would help drug users to access medical services for treatment and help reduce the damaging effects of drug-related crime.

His comments came as it emerged that the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee is set to recommend a network of "safe injecting areas", where addicts can use diamorphine, or medical heroin, prescribed by doctors.

[continues 441 words]

Scheme Seems To Be Producing Welcome Results

We would expect the Scottish Executive to be upbeat about the early results of a novel initiative it is supporting with public funds to reduce drug abuse and drug-related crime.

There is a lot more than political credibility riding on the drug-court regime being tested in Glasgow. Drug-related crime costs Scotland many millions of pounds a year and wrecks countless lives, afflicting the victims as well as the perpetrators who rob and mug to fuel habits that can eventually kill. The executive has embarked on a bold scheme to stop the revolving door that leads from addiction to criminality to court to prison to release and back again to crime and another custodial sentence. In the process, the convicted addict learns nothing but more bad habits in prison. The cycle is as wasteful as it is depressingly predictable. It closes out the notion of rehabilitation. Yet no criminal justice system can be effective without rehabilitation. The drug courts, being piloted in the city with the biggest drug problem in Scotland, offer rehabilitation and, in the process, hope for the person who comes under their jurisdiction, as well as society generally.

[continues 296 words]

POLITICIANS are to press for a review of controversial changes to customs and excise services in Scotland - as senior officials claimed its coastline had become a "soft touch" for smugglers.

The Scotsman understands that a report by a Westminster select committee this week will voice serious concerns over surveillance and security along beaches and remote harbours, particularly in the north-east and west.

Members of the Scottish affairs committee may also call for a further investigation to assess whether the number of officers at key points along the coastline should to be increased.

[continues 569 words]

SCOTLAND'S first cannabis cafe could be open for business next month, one of the owners of the controversial enterprise told The Herald last night.

Kevin Williamson, founder of the Rebel Inc publishing firm, posted details of the new Rebel Inc Coffeeshop planned for "the heart of Edinburgh" on his website yesterday afternoon.

On it, he describes how the members-only establishment will eventually sell cannabis direct to customers as a means of cutting out the adulterated supplies in the city's deprived areas.

[continues 293 words]

A MAJOR operation to cut off criminals' outlets for stolen goods is being launched by Grampian Police to try to break the "steal, sell, buy drugs" culture in Aberdeen.

Police say within hours of housebreakings, car thefts or muggings many offenders have sold the spoils of their crime at a knockdown price to pay for their next fix. Officers' aim is to identify places where stolen goods are "fenced" and to disrupt the chain of events to such an extent that it will not be easy to quickly sell goods to feed a drug habit.

[continues 277 words]

THE possession of small amounts of cannabis should be legalised and being caught with cocaine or heroin should not automatically mean jail, according to a former head of Lothian's drugs squad.

Superintendent Jinty Kerr - the first woman to run a drugs squad in Scotland - said allowing people to have cannabis for personal use would allow the police to target drug dealers.

And simply throwing people into prison because they are using class A drugs, such as cocaine and heroin, is not the way to solve the country's drugs problems, she said.

[continues 698 words]

DOCTORS in the Highlands are calling for local drug support services to be established as a matter of urgency after police confirmed there had been a significant rise in the availability of heroin in the area.

The Herald reported last month GPs had written to the health minister requesting a share of funding to help them deal with a growing problem. Now, figures from police confirm a significant rise in heroin seizures.

Northern Constabulary netted more of the class A drug in the first three months of this year than in the whole of 2001. Last year, they seized three times as much heroin as the year 2000. But the police were unable to give precise figures of how much heroin was involved. The number of drug offences has also increased from 1188 in 2000 to 1701 last year, the police said.

[continues 456 words]

ONE of Scotland's most prominent business leaders has called for all drugs to be legalised.

Ivor Tiefenbrun, founder and managing director of hi-fi firm Linn Products, said he has held the view since watching close friends die from heroin overdoses or battle their addictions.

The millionaire entrepreneur revealed that as a youngster in Govanhill, on the south side of Glasgow, three of his neighbours died from fatal doses of the drug.

Tiefenbrun added that he was "deeply unimpressed" by the Scottish Executive's stance on drugs and accused them of lacking vision.

[continues 182 words]

The Scottish Prison Service is offering a radical new drugs programme to prevent the deaths of offenders when they leave prison.

Under the Retox Programme, prisoners who warn they intend to use heroin on release, will be offered methadone.

The SPS said the move marked a radical and realistic approach to drug abuse among inmates.

A spokesman said as many as three out of four prisoners are drug abusers.

Some are victims of overdose when they are released because their bodies cannot cope with the drugs.

[continues 97 words]

PRISONERS in Scotland's jails are being offered a heroin substitute to wean themselves back on to drugs shortly before they are released into the community, The Scotsman can reveal.

Inmates with a history of drug addiction prior to their sentences are being offered methadone in jail if they tell prison doctors they are likely to return to heroin use as soon as they are released.

The Scottish Prison Service has introduced the controversial pilot scheme, called the Retox Programme, to help to prevent the growing number of released prisoners overdosing on heroin while on parole.

[continues 693 words]

THE number of drug addicts using methadone in Grampian has almost quadrupled in the past four years, prompting an MSP to question the success of its use.

The number of dispensed items of methadone rose from about 70,000 in 1996-97 to more than 270,000 in 2000-01 - twice the national increase. The figure emerged following a parliamentary question by Richard Lochhead, North-East SNP MSP, to Malcolm Chisholm, the health minister.

One leading drugs worker said the increase was "absolutely no surprise at all" and reinforced the view of her agency that the methadone programme was not working. However, Grampian Health Board strenuously denied that claim.

[continues 349 words]

THE Scottish executive is being urged to help tackle a growing heroin problem in Lochaber after GPs highlighted a series of drugs-related suicides.

Senior partners in the three doctors' surgeries in Fort William have written to Malcolm Chisholm, the health minister, calling for improved facilities for drug users.

Dr Michael Foxley, Dr Chris Robinson and Dr Jim Douglas say there is a "serious and significant" heroin problem in Lochaber, bringing with it related problems such as hepatitis C. "Sadly we have had several drug-related suicides of young people within the last couple of years. There is widespread use of other illegal drugs throughout Lochaber."

[continues 157 words]

A FLOOD of cheap heroin is heading for the streets of Scotland because of a massive increase in opium production in Afghanistan since the Taliban were ousted.

United Nations experts have put European cities on full-scale alert after they discovered that farmers in the country are threatening to reclaim their position as the world's biggest producers of illicit heroin.

Farmers are preparing to reap up to 2,700 tonnes of opium, producing some 250 tonnes of pure heroin, in the next few months. The bumper harvest is 14 times bigger than the amount grown in the country last year, when production was outlawed as 'un-Islamic' by the fundamentalist Taliban regime.

[continues 1288 words]