FISHING FOR SMACK

How long will it be before a Fraserburgh trawler is lost through heroin? Not
long, if you believe the rumours in the town , says Jim Gilchrist

A BUNCH of Brochers - Fraserburgh folk - are discussing the attempts being
made to raise a boat that went aground and holed off the harbour mouth
recently during fog. One man, a former fisherman, dismisses with scorn the
theory that faulty radar was responsible for the mishap - "That's nae
excuse" - and recalls when in his pre-radar fishing days, the skipper would
call the crew out to stand on deck and listen for the shore foghorn and
whether it was sounding on port or starboard, so he could steer accordingly.
"Them as goes to sea now," he continues, "they've nae conception of what
it's like withoot radar."

Conversely, those who went to sea from Fraserburgh even a handful of years
of ago would have no conception of the bewildering fog of anguish and
concern that is now blighting the north-east fishing port, some of whose
fleet are putting to sea manned by habitual heroin users. Two men from one
of these boats died onshore in separate overdose incidents last month and
there are those who believe that it is only a matter of time before there is
a death offshore or a serious accident related to drug abuse.

The problem has been highlighted by a local GP, Dr Sandy Wisley, who has
released statistics showing an alarming increase in the number of heroin
overdose cases dealt with by the local hospital, increasing from 12 in 1997
to 52 during 1998, and that 72 per cent of the heroin overdoses on 78 per
cent of the occasions involved fishermen. Dr Wisley first expressed his
concern at what he was seeing last year but he officially released the
Fraserburgh Noxalone Study (Noxalone being an opiate antidote used in
overdose cases) a fortnight ago. The figures, collated by the town's three
medical practices, "are no' very clever", as Wisley bluntly puts it, and
were grimly underlined by the deaths through heroin overdose earlier in
March of two Fraserburgh fishermen, Andrew Urquhart, 31, and Michael
Simpson, 27, who worked on the same boat. In February another Fraserburgh
man, 26-year-old welder Mark Muir, had also died of an overdose.

Wisley's charting of these overdoses warns not only of an inordinate heroin
problem in the town, but that the bulk of the individuals concerned were
men, mostly aged 17-30, and largely involved in fishing. So contrary to
perceptions of drug-abusers as socially deprived urbanites, here is serious
drug-taking amid the hard-working and highly-paid culture of the fisherman,
with the "skeg" - the heroin - just a mobile phone call away from the quays.

The figures gave the north-east port a higher level per head of population
of drug abuse than Strathclyde. However, whether you want to call it
Scotland's heroin capital or just sunny Fraserburgh, neither term is
entirely justified this rainy morning as I sit in the Finlayson Street
Health Centre and listen to Wisley spelling out his alarming findings. So
far, he says, all Fraserburgh's drug deaths have been onshore - fishermen,
he explains, tend to have less tolerance of opiates than their shore
counterparts because of their enforced periods at sea - but "the biggest
surprise is that we haven't yet seen a drugs death at sea, given the
behaviour on shore".

For he believes there is "no question" that fishermen are injecting heroin
at sea. "The only time you can do it is in the wheelhouse when the others
are asleep or when you turn into your bunk, because you can jack up in the
toilet and get into bed."

He can't reveal instances, but he believes there have been "a few near
things". And he knows of "dirty" boats, in which everyone from the skipper
down has a drug habit.

He also expresses fears that the blood-borne diseases associated with needle
use, Hepatitis B and C and AIDS, can give young fishermen the kind of
medical history which will debar them from getting a mortgage or insurance,
thus hampering their chances of investing in their own boats, depleting the
town's future fishing fleet. "Fraserburgh is a nice place, a decent
community," he stays. "It doesn't deserve drug abuse."

Wisley's report and the surrounding publicity has prompted mixed and
sometimes acrimonious reactions within the community and in the fishing
industry at large. Fishery organisations have tended to regard the problem
as society's rather than the industry's, although the Scottish White Fish
Producers' Association organised a conference on the problem last month,
while George Sutherland, vice-president of the Scottish Fishermen's
Federation announced that his organisation would donate UKP10,000 towards
drug education programmes for primary schools, although he was perceived by
some to shoot himself in the foot on TV when he commented ambiguously that
if a skipper was to start testing for drugs, he wouldn't have a crew ...

However, Roddy MacColl, the secretary of the Fisherman's Association Ltd,
says that FAL entirely endorses Wisley's claims, has set up workshops and is
involved in producing a booklet to be issued to fishing boat crews. "Clearly
it's not just the fishing industry," says MacColl. "It is the whole of
society, but obviously when it's happening in an industry that works in such
hazardous conditions, people have to be made aware of it.

"People I've spoken to are reporting disturbing incidents, so there is a
problem and it has to be faced now."

So far as random testing for drugs is concerned, MacColl points out that it
happens in the offshore oil industry, "And I'm sure that the fishing
industry will have to approach it the same way."

The Broch, as Fraserburgh is known, still nurtures some of the more
traditional elements associated with the north-east fishing community. In
one of its outlying villages, Inverallochy, they still hold a "Temperance
Walk". There are people here who take their religion - and their
abstention - very seriously indeed. "So if you tell the place it's got a
drugs problem, there's bound to be many who'll not want to think about it,"
says Alex Shand, the editor of the Fraserburgh Herald. "Now, though, there
is at least an awareness that there is a problem here, and that it can be
addressed. That's a major shift.

"There was a time when a skipper here could crew his boat several times
over. But with the drugs problem it's getting less easy to crew a boat. In a
few years, when the older guys retire, you could have a job putting crews
together."

Then he reflects the resentful feelings of many locals: "What's happening
with all the media attention is that Fraserburgh's now seen as a town full
of junkies. But there are also a lot of great things going on here that
don't get reported."

A social worker involved with the town's addicts tends to play down the more
sensational reports on the problem. "When I came here 14 years ago, I was
told that 50 per cent of the people here didn't drink and the other 50 per
cent who did made up for them ... If I look at the situation historically,
there's no change. The presenting drug is different - and, of course,
illegal.

"People here," he continues, "have always been very open in discussing their
problems, which maybe magnifies certain issues." Asked if the same kind of
thing could be going on in Peterhead, down the coast, he suggests that the
other port's problem probably mirrors that of Fraserburgh, "but without the
publicity. But the same question could be said of Inverness or other areas
of Scotland".

On the street or the quayside, opinions are conflicting, often depending on
age group. "Oh aye, a' fishermen are druggies, eh?" says one older hand,
with mild rancour, when I raise the topic. "I never saw so much f drugs
before I came here," expostulates another.

Then an 18-year-old girl, who has lost four friends through smack, asks me
why I'm talking to older people about it, when it's her generation that are
experiencing the problem. "We never had anything like this when I was at
school and I only left last year. People of my generation do it because
there's nothing else to do and you want to be popular."

She comes out with a litany of substances which the drug-takers are now
taking: "You start with hash, then you do diffs and vallies [dihydrocodeine,
used to wean addicts off heroin, and valium], tabs and Es, then skag
[heroin] or meth [methadone]. Everybody knows who deals; you see them
walking about, spaced out."

There are a lot of good things about Fraserburgh, she says, although it
badly needs entertainment amenities: "But it won't change until they get rid
of the junkies."

Others won't talk quite so freely. A wasted-looking man in a pub assures me
it's all the rich kids who are taking heroin. "We're just having a pint ...
and I like a bit of a blaw, mind ... and the odd hit of smack," he confesses
amiably. "But it's a' been overblown." He suddenly perks up: "But, here, I
can give you a right good story if you give me some cash, like," and he
turns to his grinning friends: "Wha was that quine fae the News of the
World?"

DRINK, DRUGS and the Doric. But what of the fleet? Down in the harbour, the
Resilient has tied up after ten days at sea. In the meticulously gleaming
wheelhouse, skipper Ian Thomson brandishes a squeegee: "See this? I'm a
living nightmare for them. I keep them at it, cleaning, polishing. This is
their hame." The implication is that the younger members of Thomson's crew
have little time for drugs. The Resilient is a clean ship, in every sense.

Thomson, a jocose, bearded 41-year-old, is a third or fourth generation
fisherman - he can't remember which - and the 80ft trawler is his third
boat. Like most of his generation and older, he tends to be dismissive of
Fraserburgh's drug problem. "We ken there's drugs, but we hannae come across
any. We swear and we like a drink, mind - but there's nae drinking at sea."

So far as Thomson is concerned, he simply wouldn't have a drug-user on
board. He's endorsed in this by 72-year-old Alex Tait, who first went to sea
when he was 13 1/2 - "and I've never seen a druggie", he says, with some
incredulity at what's happening in his community.

Wisley would see this as a typical reaction from the older fishermen, whom
he likes to compare to parents who can't believe their children are dabbling
in drugs. "And just as youngsters can run rings round their parents, the
younger fishermen can run rings round their elders."

That night, two young fishermen, aged 19 and 21, are playing darts in a
quiet harbour pub. Drugs, they point out, matter of factly, are readily
obtainable. "It's as easy as walking into a pub for a pint," says one (like
many others, he prefers to stay anonymous). He's been on boats where there
were crew members using drugs - "but not on the boat".

Mind you, he adds darkly, "a lot of folk would be scared if there was random
testing."

They both sound disapproving of drug-taking and, like others, they complain
there isn't anything to do in Fraserburgh. The bright lights of Aberdeen,
after all, are more than a 40-mile round trip away: "Surely this place could
support a cinema?"

Then they fall to discussing the story of a local fishing boat recently
having to turn back, "because its crew were wasted". The skipper, they say,
found the watchman falling asleep and when he went to shoot the nets other
crew members were out of it.

Pinned to the bar wall is a photocopied anonymous poem, titled Miss Heroin,
which, the barman tells me, was distributed at the funeral of one of the
fishermen who overdosed last month: "You'll give me your morals, your
conscience and heart / Because you are mine - till death do us part."

The two lads, both of whom see fishing their career, shake their heads and
get on with it. You hope they have radar.