DRUGS: A STEP BY STEP GUIDE
Mugshots Show Girl's Descent Into An Early Grave

These pictures tell the tragic story of a life ravaged by
drugs.

It is hard to believe the face smiling defiantly in a 1983 police
mugshot is the same woman 14 years later, just before she died.

With every passing year, the girl looks more and more defeated as she
sinks deeper into the abyss.

The fixed stare, the dishevilled hair and the face swollen from
beatings, becomes dark and haunted by the time she died.

To some, the girl in the snapshots is nobody, just another addict with
one more story of despair.

But it is a picture every parent of every junkie will recognise as
they watch their loved ones disintegrate before their eyes.

The girl in these police mugshots is a New York street junkie
photographed every time she was picked up until her last arrest in
1997.

But she is the face of drug addicts everywhere - from New York to
Glasgow.

Drugs know no boundaries, and for every girl like this in New York
there is one in every city across the world.

Yesterday, as it was revealed Scotland's drug death toll hit 276 in
1998/99, the pictures of this girl tell a familiar tale.

The poster now hangs on the wall of the Belfast office of the head of
the RUC's drugs squad.

Detective Superintendent Judith Gillespie was so shocked by the
graphic image she brought it back to Ulster after a trip to New York
for a drugs conference.

Yesterday an RUC spokesman said: "The poster will serve as a reminder
of just what can happen if you take drugs."

A series of hardline approaches to drugs in New York have slashed the
numbers of drug deaths in the city and driven dealers off the streets.

America's toughest law enforcer Howard Safir, Commissioner of New York
City Police, introduced tough tactics to combat the dealing and
increased the number of police on the streets by 30 per cent - 40,000
officers.

Safir recently told Scottish police forces they had to treat drug
trafficking like a business.

He said: "It means not just one isolated raid but monitoring the area
over a period of months.

"The way to put people out of business is you have to make their
business environment as inhospitable as you can."

Before Safir took a no-nonsense approach there were 7000 identified
outdoor drug locations in New York. He maintains now his officers
cannot find any.

Heroin or similar morphine-type drugs accounted for 41 per cent of
Scotland's grim drug deaths toll last year.

And nearly two-thirds of new arrivals at drug centres said heroin was
their main or secondary drug with 42 per cent injecting, according to
Drug Misuse Statistics for 1998/99.

They showed drugs-related deaths in Scotland rose from 263 in 1997 to
276 last year.

The figures also indicated that HIV infection among injecting
drug-users rose to more than 1200.

Deputy justice minister Angus McKay said the statistics showed the
scale of the problem.

He said: "People rightly demand action to cut drug deaths and remove
the scourge of drugs from streets and playgrounds.

"They want an end to the cycle of crime which traps drugs users and
threatens community life.

"They want a crackdown on the drug dealers and organised crime. The
Scottish Executive shares those goals."