HEROIN CAPITAL CLAIMS VICTIM NO 107

Hugh McCartney moved into the two-room flat on the virtually derelict estate
near the Celtic football ground in the East End of Glasgow about two years
ago. The son of Ian McCartney, the Cabinet Office Minister, lived in one of
four council tenement blocks that have been listed for demolition.

IRA graffiti were daubed at the entrance to the flat. The unkempt front
garden was strewn with litter.

Steel shutters outnumbered windows.

Most of the blocks in the surrounding streets have been boarded up or
wrecked by vandals.

One neighbour said: "If he was an MP's son then what the hell was he doing
living in this hole?" But another, George Turnball, Hugh's downstairs
neighbour, said: "Hugh was a nice lad - never bothered anybody."

Last night people who knew the family when they lived in Wigan, where his
father was a councillor in the 1980s, said that as a youngster he was often
up to mischief.

After his parents divorced, he frequently played truant though he was
described as being naughty rather than nasty and was not in any serious
trouble with the police.

He moved to Glasgow with his mother a decade ago and it was there that he
spent his formative teenage years.

He is the 107th person to die of a drug overdose in Strathclyde, Britain's
heroin capital, this year. The death toll among drug-users in the west of
Scotland has exceeded last year's total of 99 and it is expected to rise
further.

The record number of deaths reflects the growing heroin epidemic.

Efforts by the Government to crack down on the problem by promising to
establish a drug enforcement agency and threatening dealers with tougher
punishments have had little impact.

The rising death toll comes at a time of record seizures of Class A drugs in
Scotland. In the first four months of this year, Strathclyde police seized
heroin worth about pounds 30 million.

Yet Glasgow's estimated 12,000 addicts continue to secure their supplies and
put their lives at risk by mixing and injecting heroin, one of the most
dangerous ways to take drugs.

It has also led to high levels of HIV infection among the city's drug-users.
Although heroin is responsible for the overwhelming majority of drug deaths,
other drugs, including Ecstasy, cocaine and the sleeping pill temazepam have
also killed.

John Orr, Chief Constable of Strathclyde, acknowledges there is a serious
problem. "More than 90 drug deaths have occurred in Scotland outside the
Strathclyde Police force area since the beginning of the year," he said.
"This shows the extent of the challenge that faces communities throughout
Scotland."

Campaigners claim the only way to cut the death toll is to throw the dealers
off the estates.

But this method has had limited success.

The dealers move to another area and the addicts move with them.