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His policy supported by the handful of doctors I consulted in my own

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His policy (supported by the handful of doctors I consulted in my own unscientific poll – one described it as "eminently sensible in this exceptional work environment") – led one voluntary drug worker to mount a tireless, but abortive attempt to get Dr Wisley struck off.The national press, who were briefly in town two years ago to cover the dihydrocodeine row (which has subsided, though Dr Wisley still prescribes it), are long gone. And yet – though you'd never guess it, looking at the solid granite cottages and the magnificent pelagic, or ocean-going, boats tied up in the harbour – Fraserburgh's slow tragedy rolls on. The dead man at his sink, with his apparent air of scrubbed normality, is a curiously apt symbol for the town."The truly dreadful thing," said Sarah, a woman in her mid-twenties whose younger brother has overdosed five times, "is that, for young people in Fraserburgh, heroin use has become the norm I am abnormal because I don't take heroin Everybody is on it Everybody." She paused. "A few days ago, I came across a photograph of my class at primary school. I looked at every face, and every pupil in that picture but one is taking it. There are more people dead from my younger brother's class than there are from mine," she went on, "and there are more dead from mine than there are from my mother's."A Substance Abuse Service clinic, opened last year, has taken some pressure off the local doctors. But it has been housed in a decrepit disused garage next to a carpet wholesaler on an industrial estate – a site hardly calculated to boost the self-esteem of potential clients.

It's not a place where anyone would even begin to consider putting a specialist clinic for asthmatics, or diabetics One great virtue of its site is that it's hidden away. The mother of one heroin addict lost her voice from shock when she found out he was using, four years ago, and she has not spoken a word since. Many in Fraserburgh still believe that silence and concealment remain the most appropriate responses to their difficulty.Jane, a mother in her late thirties, took several days before deciding to talk to me. "If I'm honest, this is not something that I want to do," she said, "but I feel that I should Somebody has to.

Many people here," she added, "get annoyed if you even speak about heroin They feel you are betraying the good name of the town. Their attitude is that these people are just a load of junkies, and the sooner they're dead and gone, the better."I met Jane on the seafront at Rosehearty, a mile or so up the coast from Fraserburgh She came with her son Stephen, a 22-year- old heroin user We sat facing the sea, near a caf?alled the "Tuck Inn". Its front is decorated with two painted dolphins: they stand on their tails, beaming waggishly, a knife and fork in their flippers, beckoning passers-by. The inside of the diner is now a sombre ruin.A trawlerman since he was 16, Stephen has overdosed seven times, four times at his mother's house, and is now too ill to go to sea. He has had no heroin for a fortnight, though he's taking a cocktail of tranquillisers.

It's not that cold an afternoon, but he's visibly trembling as he draws on a Marlboro. His mother is an articulate, engaging woman; her expression shows the extent to which she has had to draw on her considerable reserves of courage and determination over the past six years. Recently, she says, she has come close to taking her own life.Stephen has stolen thousands of pounds from his mother. "In the end," Jane said, "I opened a special account and put £3,000 in it, to pay for his funeral I thought I had to keep money safe for that, at least. Then one day I came in, and the card for that account had disappeared. The bank told me that there was £900 missing."She still keeps the funeral money aside "The other night," she says, quietly, we had a row. I found myself telling him: "Look – if it has to happen – if you have to die – let it happen now Let me grieve Because I'm grieving already I'm grieving every day And yet you are still alive." A pause.

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