A city unable to kick the habit

SOCIAL WORKERS and doctors in Glasgow had been cautious about making too much of the fall in drug deaths in recent years. The human wreckage was still filing through their waiting rooms, desperate for methadone, for dressings on needle abscesses or for a roof over their heads.

The death toll dropped from 75 in 1995 to 30 last year - but not too many professionals were shouting about Glasgow kicking the habit. The number of people injecting has remained stubbornly at around 9,000 for most of the decade. This year, with festive binges still to come, 63 drug- related deaths, double the previous year's figure, have been recorded already.

A look at a graph of drug deaths over the past four years shows that the low point, from the tail of 1996 to the middle of 1997, coincides with the disappearance from the market of temazepam "jellies", which are a favourite component of the Glasgow drug cocktail.

Dave, a sunken-cheeked 32-year-old trying to put together some sort of life through the Glasgow Drugs Crisis Centre, was ready to rob people at knife-point for a hit of heroin and a few jellies. "Shoplifting was easiest and quickest. But there were times when I took more desperate measures, things I'm ashamed of ... When I'm on the streets and I'm using, it's like an animal instinct that comes through."

In and out of prison or other institutions for most of his life, Dave smoked cannabis when he was 12, dropped acid (LSD) and was injecting heroin before he left school. "I just took it to block out reality," he said, echoing a Glasgow refrain. Users are frequently homeless, cut off by their families and with little prospect of finding a job, let alone holding on to it. Dave was born in Dennistoun, then a traditional working- class part of the city. But as drugs corrupted his life, family members would pass him on the street.

Dave injected heroin and temazepam in his groin. "Temazepam is a really, really, popular combination with heroin," he said. But he has suffered blood clots, abscesses, pneumonia and chest infections.

Three previous attempts to kick drugs have failed, although he did go clean for nine months until choosing to inject again last September. "I was frightened, feeling guilt and I had rent arrears of pounds 1,000. I was at the end." When he entered the centre, three weeks ago, he did not think he would live to Christmas and was not sure he wanted to.

Andrew Horne, the manager of the centre, which sees 3,600 drug users a year, is wary of the emphasis placed by Strathclyde Police on a purer form of heroin as the likely cause of the upsurge in deaths. He and Norman Poole, a medical officer at the centre, blame temazepam, which, when added to the cocktail, makes the user "act like a drunk after two bottles of vodka".

"If a heroin user injects temazepam then blacks out and chokes on his vomit, he will test positive for heroin and that goes down as the cause of death," Dr Poole explained.

Temazepam took hold in Glasgow in the early 1990s, a clear liquid tranquilliser in what looks like a cod-liver oil capsule. To try to foil the users, it was changed to a jelly, but addicts simply heated it to draw the liquefied drug into the syringe. However, it quickly solidified in the user's vein, with horrendous consequences.

In 1995, temazepam came under tight control and is now only manufactured and prescribed in Britain in tablet form. Its use in Glasgow fell and so did the deaths. But by the end of last year "jellies" were back on the streets - once again in the user-friendly form of a clear liquid in a capsule - and the deaths graph turned up.

Of the 10 latest cases on Mr Horne's desk, seven were using temazepam. One man was injecting up to 20 capsules a day. The experts believe the capsules, costing pounds 1.50 to pounds 2 each on the street, are imported, possibly from Holland or eastern Europe.

Dr Laurence Gruer, addictions co-ordinator for the Greater Glasgow Health Board, has one solace: "Things could be far worse". And alcohol is still a bigger problem. For every drug-related hospital admission in the city, five are related to drink.