As the Government looks at prescribing free heroin to cut drug- related crime, Little Criminals a new documentary shows the grim reality of life for addicts on Glasgow’s streets………..

A girl rolls up her sleeve in a slow, deliberate way. She winds the leather belt around the top of her arm, once, twice, three times, and pulls it tight. The light given off from the bare bulb in the room is weak and her face is half hidden in the shadows. She looks young, maybe late teens or early twenties.

Without a sound, the needle slips under her skin and into the vein. She briefly moves her head into the light. Her boyfriend, Chris, has just injected Michelle with heroin. Next, she will inject him. They see this as the ultimate declaration of their love for each other, an act of intimacy that binds them together.

Michelle’s arms are covered with the tracks of needles. This time she had avoided the early stages of "rattling", the tortuous symptoms of withdrawal.

Now she has had her "hit", she is content. The television flickers in the corner of the Glasgow bedsit she and Chris share with his dad, Dennis, also an addict. It’s ignored as they slump in chairs, the drug beginning its work. When the effects wear off, Chris and Dennis will go out shoplifting and sell the goods to buy more heroin, a daily occurrence.

Glasgow High

Last week, the Scottish executive revealed that, by council area, Glasgow has the highest rate of "problem" drug misuse in Scotland. Problem drugs are defined as opiates such as heroin and methadone. Of 30,000 addicts in Scotland, 8,000 are in Glasgow.

A report due out soon from the Home Affairs Select Committee is expected to conclude that the current policy of heroin prohibition is actually exacerbating the problem. On the streets, organised gangs control the trade and addicts spend an average of £16,500 a year on drugs.

One solution being considered by the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, and backed by the police, is to supply heroin to registered addicts on the NHS. This, it is hoped, will break the addicts’ cycle of stealing to feed their habit. The Scottish executive is currently spending £128 million in an attempt to reduce the 2.6 million drug-related crimes a year.

A World Revisited

The vicious circle of shoplifting and drug use is one that filmmaker David Scott is familiar with. Scott spent 1999 filming a group of heroin addicts in and around Glasgow. The resulting film, Little Criminals, offers a revealing insight into the drugs subculture. But Scott’s experience goes further than that. During the mid-1980s in Edinburgh - the era captured by Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting - he had a serious problem with opiates, pharmaceutical drugs and heroin. His wife, Denise, was also heavily addicted. Now clean, Scott wanted to revisit the world he was once part of.

"It’s real, it happens every single day and it’s happening right now," says Scott, 37 . "It’s a horrible, sordid, hellish world. It’s not something that a rational person would want to inhabit.

" You become enmeshed in that world and everyone that you know is involved. All that matters is the next fix, the next shot, the next feel of the needle slipping into the arm."

For addicts such as Chris and Michelle, life revolves around heroin. Like most users in the film, shoplifting is their main source of income - very few are able to hold down a job. Chris’s dad, Dennis, is one of the "old guard", having developed his habit in the 1960s. The two of them have been forced to work for a pair of small-time gangster brothers, Tony and Big Al, who supply their heroin.

Aura Of Invisibility

In their bedsit in the West End of Glasgow, Chris is bent over a flame, heating heroin in a spoon, ready to inject. In his twenties, he is articulate and clearly intelligent. "When you are shoplifting you have this fake aura of invisibility, that’s what the drugs do," he says. "Having smack before you go out shoplifting just gives you a boost, you feel more confident and know that if you go to jail, you’ve just had a hit and can last the few hours they are going to keep you inside. You think about the action of the needle, and once that needle’s in your arm and once you have put its contents in your arm, all the pain goes away, it’s just totally soothing."

On a trip out in Glasgow, Dennis shows off the stolen stainless steel cutlery set he will sell for enough money "hopefully to get Chris some kit". While Michelle sits at home, thin and pale, scratching the scabs on her arm , Chris scores in a back street close, where five out of the six houses are home to drug dealers. He hands over £35 to the woman dealer and is given two "scores" by one of the children running around outside who keep the little packets in the pockets of their coats.

For Ray, a graduate from the Glasgow School of Art, the slide into addiction was slow, progressing from soft drugs to smoking heroin on tin foil, "chasing the dragon", and now injecting. He used to sublet a flat from his dealer, Tony, with fellow addict Davey - DL - but now lives alone after DL was jailed for theft. The flat has bare walls; plaster hangs from the ceiling and there are no carpets.

Designer Drugs

Ray, who is working as a graphic designer, spends all his wages on heroin and owes large amounts of money to the bank, friends and his estranged family. He has been given verbal warnings at work for being late and off sick. On a cold, rainy day in February, he is out on the streets looking for his next "fix".

Ruchill, notorious for drug dealing and violence, is a grim place of grey flats, graffiti-scrawled walls and boarded-up windows. Chris is inside the dealer’s flat trying to sell stolen goods for a few pounds. Proficient shoplifters can steal up to £500 worth of goods in a day. The addicts work in a team, with a "bag man" acting as decoy, distracting attention and taking the haul from the scene. Favourite booty includes champagne and whisky that can be sold for cash in pubs and clubs.

When Ray finally gets his fix, the relief is overwhelming. "I feel normal again, I can get on with shit and get ready for work again," he says. None of the film’s users try to explain their addiction.

Possessed by Aliens

Chris and Dennis go on a methadone programme, taking the heroin substitute which is supposed to stabilise addicts’ lives, but before they begin Dennis cooks up one last hit for old time’s sake. He says of his addiction: "It was alien behaviour, like having an alien inside me doing it."

Their attempts at staying off heroin do not last long. Ray gets himself clean for a while but decides he can handle just one more chase of the dragon, just one more hit. Soon he is injecting again.

He goes out stealing books with another addict while DL, now out of prison, goes through dustbins looking for items to sell in second-hand shops. Later he shows off his spoils from a shoplifting spree in Edinburgh. The jumpers and crystal decanter will be sold to "regulars" in Ruchill.

Street Survival

Theirs is a tightly regulated lifestyle of dread and panic. "Some of the schemes in Glasgow where they go for their drugs are terrifying," says Scott. "Everything is very sinister, it’s frightening. There is the risk of getting ‘bumped’, being ripped off for money. Characters are hanging around outside waiting to mug you, and the drugs squad could be around at any time. It’s a very difficult place to survive in."

Scott was arrested twice during the making of the film and charged with coercing individuals to use a Class A Substance under the Misuse of Drugs Act. One charge was dropped and he was acquitted on the other. Police raided his flat, looking for tapes as evidence. Filming on a hand-held camera was dangerous and difficult - on one estate he was chased by a dealer wielding a baseball bat.

The images Scott captured are very graphic. In one scene, DL risks his life by injecting a potentially deadly cocktail of heroin and "jellies" - the pre-med, Temazepam. The mixture can clog the veins; there’s a real threat of coronary thrombosis, and limb loss. DL survives, but next time he might not be so lucky. He is already infected with the potentially fatal Hepatitis C virus. In another scene, Big Al lies on a table while someone injects into a vein in his neck. Eventually, the veins in the arms collapse and addicts must move on to their legs, feet, neck and then deep in the groin.

Devastation Day

Sam and his brother Dan, both in their twenties, take heroin because they believe it relaxes their mind and body. Dan tells the story of the day he overdosed and was devastated when he woke up to realise he was still alive. Their mother despairs of their lifestyle but seems resigned to it. "For this generation there is not the work that there used to be. Still, you cannot have people sitting around watching television and shoplifting, can you?"

Scott is well aware of the high price a drugs habit can exact. He almost killed himself a couple of times during his years of abuse. Eventually, he left Denise and went on a drugs treatment programme.

Revisiting the past was painful for Scott, but - baseball bats aside - it turned out to be dangerous too. During filming he began smoking heroin again. Although he has since stopped, his long-term girlfriend, a social worker, could not cope and their ten-year relationship ended. Even so, Scott does not regret making the film, viewing it as a cathartic process.

Slow Recovery

For some of the people in the film, life has moved on. Ray, who ended up staying in a prostitute’s house, is now drug-free, working and living in Hull. DL is in and out of jail and hitting speedballs, a dangerous cocaine/heroin mix. Michelle left Chris and came off drugs. Chris and Dennis were last heard of still living in their bedsit. Dan is on a methadone programme and his brother Sam, who became disillusioned, believing that worms were eating through his ear into his brain, is now improving.

At the end of 1999 the most notorious streets in Ruchill were torn down - but the dealers simply moved on to nearby streets. Not much has changed in Glasgow in the two years since the film was made. Today, just as many drug users are living this way.

The solution, says Scott, is a long way off. "Prescribing free heroin will certainly cut down on criminal activity but it is not a long-term cure," he says. "The addicts’ enslavement continues and is likely to remain that way until a new, serious approach is initiated."

Bright Future Predicted For Porsche Video Visionary

Launching a company based on his own discovery is the fulfilment of a dream for Ben Hounsell.

The 26-year-old Edinburgh University postgraduate has established Adaptive Programmable Silicon while still completing his microelectronics PhD.

The one-man firm, based in an office on the university’s science campus, will exploit Hounsell’s invention of high performance processors, H3P, which boost the capabilities of electronic equipment (such as third generation mobile phones) by speeding up the transmission of video images.

Mr Hounsell has kicked off with a £40,000 Royal Society of Edinburgh fellowship grant last month - about half of which is salary. The scientist said the grant saved him from having to seek funding from loans. He plans to woo investors, build a core team and move into new premises as the firm develops.

He said: "This has been my dream - taking a technical idea and running with it. I did not want to be just stuck in a lab, but to get into the business side too. I will have a foot in both camps, which will be a huge learning experience."

He said running the enterprise himself was a much greater motivating force than having to work equally hard for a large company, but without the promise of similar future rewards.

However, forecasting how much he might be worth in a few years’ time was difficult. "If the company does well, you do well yourself, but its value is all on paper and you only see it when you sell your stake."

Sharon Bamford, the director of the university's science park, said: "Ben is very focused. He can see a Porsche ahead."