The drugs crisis and AIDS in 1980s Edinburgh

Abstract

Some 4667 km separate the capitals of Scotland and Iran. To reach Kabul, you have to go a further 1126 km. But events in faraway places can have unexpected consequences. In the wake of the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, cheap heroin flooded into Europe. In the mid-1970s, there were fewer than 100 injecting drug users in Edinburgh; by the early 1980s, there were more than 5000.