Bsharing Needles & The Damage Done

Narcus Scotland - Heroin hell & aids epidemic

- Jane Hamilton

Edinburgh was faced with a public health emergency that saw the city labelled Europe’s AIDS capital

THEY were young, bored, disaffected, socially deprived and unemployed – and easy prey for dealers who peddled in misery and promised them heroin would take them away from all their troubles.

Once in its grip, addicts found they needed £50 a day to feed their habit, so they turned to crime.

Unless you were wealthy, the options for funding your habit meant steal, sell or deal. Addicts turned to prostitution, raided houses, mugged people in the street or were sucked into dealing to pay off their debts.

Opiates as a recreational drug had been in use for centuries in the Far East but heroin itself wasn’t invented until 1874.

It started life as a cough medicine and by the time doctors noticed its addictive and destructive properties, it was already too late.

The criminal underworld had seen an opportunity to make money – supply and demand drove their business and lined their pockets.

Disgraced Bay City Rollers boss and sex fiend Tam Paton was using his fame to bolster his already considerable fortune by selling drugs to Edinburgh’s addicts.

Distributed by his “chickens” – the nickname he gave to the army of young boys he surrounded himself with – all the proceeds would go back to Paton, who died in 2009.

The HQ for his operation was his sprawling Little Kellerstain home in Gogar, to the west of the city – where his gang of young men would live before spreading out through the city each day to dish out supplies to addicts.

Paton was convicted for drug offences but always claimed he had no knowledge of the heroin flooding the city’s streets.