HIGH ROAD TO HEROIN HELL

A SPIRALLING drugs crisis in the Highlands is devastating lives with county lines criminal gangs moving in and overdose deaths on the rise, the Sunday Mail can reveal.

- BY DAN VEVERS Chief Reporter

Gangsters from across the UK are being stationed in Inverness as part of organised crime's growing footprint in the north of Scotland.

Scottish mortality rates due to drug misuse and related deaths are the highest in Europe, 3.5 times higher than England and Wales.

That is despite it being revealed last week that 13,000 heroin and opioid deaths were not included in official statistics south of the Border between 2011 and 2022 - more than 50 per cent higher than previously known.

Last year, Highlands and islands cops seized 6300 individual deals of crack cocaine, 1030 of heroin, and more than £30,000 in cash, making more than 90 arrests.

The raids came as drug deaths in the region hit a 28-month high between April and June, according to police statistics.

County lines gangs - known for exploiting children - move illegal drugs between different areas of the UK, with the term coming from dedicated phone lines they use to move product from place to place.

Now a leading officer has warned that teens as young as 16 are being sent north from cities including Glasgow, Liverpool and London by drug gangs to claim turf and terrorise locals.

DCI Craig Still, of Police Scotland's Highlands and Islands division, said the "evolving" county lines business model has seen crime bosses using younger associates to flood places like Inverness.