Cheap Heroin Set to Flood Scotland’s Streets

Scotland faces a flood of ultra-pure cheap heroin after the United Nations reported record levels of opium production across Afghanistan this year. The country has produced its largest-ever drugs harvest following a 59% surge in production in defiance of a British-led international effort to curb the country’s drugs economy.

Afghanistan is set to produce 6,100 tonnes of opium, the raw ingredient for heroin, which represents 92% of the world’s production this year. Afghanistan’s opium production is enough to exceed by 30% the world’s consumption of heroin.

Speaking to Scotland on Sunday, Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, warned of a healthcare explosion that can be expected to follow.

“I am shortly to issue a warning to the health ministries of countries of major heroin-consuming nations. Traditionally a sudden change in supply conditions does not affect the quantity of heroin, but its purity.

“When this last happened in 2004, the purity of heroin on the streets of Britain went from 24% to more than 50% purity. After three or four years of steady decline in the

number of deaths from overdose, there was a sudden increase. I fear this will happen again. This increase in opium production in Afghanistan will have serious health implications.”

The record harvest comes disproportionately from the troubled southern province of Helmand, where 4,500 British troops have been battling Taliban insurgents for the past few months. The province witnessed a 162% increase in production to more than a third of the total countrywide harvest.

Costa also warned of an increasingly critical situation across Afghanistan. “The news is very bad,” he said. “In some southern provinces the situation is out of control. Opium is the largest employer, largest income generator, largest source of capital, biggest export and main source of foreign investment.”

However, he denied that the situation was hopeless. He said that the Afghan government must recover “province by province”.

Although the number of drug-related deaths in Scotland fell to 336 last year, news of an increased heroin supply was greeted with dismay by drug campaigners last night.

Tom Wood, chairman of the Scottish Association of Alcohol and Drug Action Teams, said: “This is very bad news for us because there will be a glut of heroin on the market. This is the produce of the poppy crop from two years ago because there is quite a lead time from the opium harvest to drug production. It also comes at the same time as an unprecedented amount of cocaine is flooding the streets.”

The increase in heroin supply will also leave drugs and Customs officers overwhelmed.

Wood, a former deputy chief constable of Lothian and Borders Police, added: “The law enforcement agencies have never been performing better than now, but even performing as well as they do, they never have or will be able to stem the flow.”

Alistair Ramsay, former director of Scotland Against Drugs, who now runs Drugwise, a drugs advice consultancy, said the influx could drive the price down: “This could provoke enormous tension on Scotland’s streets between the drug lords importing cocaine from Columbia and those delivering heroin from Afghanistan. They want to maximise their profits and they won’t want competitors muscling in.”