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That’s the Record‘s headline yesterday and:

Scotland’s homeless community has told of the horror of contaminated street drugs – after 81 people died in three months after taking synthetic opioid “pyro”. Nitazenes, produced in illegal labs and used as cutting agents in heroin and benzos, are now implicated in an eighth of all suspected drug deaths, data shows.

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/horror-deadly-synthetic-drugs-scots-36797256

Where are these illegal labs?

In the Independent last September:

Police have uncovered the first drug lab for nitazenes in the UK, a senior officer says. Nitazenes are high-strength synthetic opioids, sometimes mixed into other drugs, which can be highly dangerous due to their potency.

The Scottish Police Authority’s board was updated by Police Scotland deputy chief constable Jane Connors on Thursday. Ms Connors said that the discovery of the Ayrshire lab, and the seizure of its equipment and products, has led to a significant reduction in the supply of benzodiazepines – another type of drug which sometimes contain nitazenes.

https://www.the-independent.com/news/uk/crime/nitazenes-drug-lab-ayrshire-scotland-b2833563.html

Wow! Does this mean Ayrshire has an Escobar-like drug baron able to set up one of these labs?

Also, not in the Record story, but in the above report:

Ms Connors went on to say the force had a particular focus on dealing with “county lines” drug dealing in the north of Scotland. This refers to organised crime groups from cities setting up drug-dealing operations in towns or rural areas.

and BBC Scotland repeated this tell:

DCC Connors also force had a particular focus on dealing with “county lines” drug dealing in the north of Scotland. This refers to organised crime groups from cities setting up drug-dealing operations in towns or rural areas.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62nvy4k4w1o

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Over to BBC Highland in November 2025:

That’s an Inverness-based police inspector telling us on BBC Highland Cops in S3, E4, that the drugs will be ‘brought to Inverness by organised crime groups who originate predominantly in England, whether it be London, Newcastle, Birmingham, any big city. He missed out Liverpool which featured in Series 1 and 2.

No one has ever, ever, in now at least six years since these gangs moved in, said anything like that on BBC Reporting Scotland Down or Good Mourning Scotland.

These local, not BBC, producers of the series and the local cops are political naives. They don’t know that saying these things might be bad for the image of the Union. The Union’s wider shoulders are now concealing deadly new drugs, guns, zombie knives, XL Bully dogs and are being worn by ruthless killers.

In August 2025 on Scotcast, ‘a leading detective tells Martin Geissler how English drugs gangs are targeting the Highlands.’

It’s been removed already leaving things largely as they were:

BBC Scotland still struggling to say ‘County Lines’ or ‘England’ or any English city in a drugs report on the flood that is keeping our drug deaths high

From BBC Scotland South in April 2025:

A woman has been charged after a police discovered heroin worth an estimated £180,000 during a car stop in Dumfries and Galloway. Officers acting on intelligence stopped the car on the M74 near Lockerbie at 20:25 on Friday.

The 25-year-old was arrested and released on an undertaking to appear at Dumfries Sheriff Court at a later date. Det Supt Steven Elliott described the recovery as “significant,” adding: “Drugs cause misery in our communities and we are committed to disrupting their supply.”

Now I know there are limits on what can be said about live cases but telling us if she was travelling north or south would be safe enough and that would tell us something important. I’d put money on it being north. Why do I say that?

A clear causal connection between Liverpool drug gangs, the flood of cheap, more powerful, drugs into Scotland and our still far too high drug deaths. Why are Scotland’s media ignoring that?

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From BBC England:

Five members of a county lines drug gang known as the Scouse Dave Line have been jailed. A total of seven members of the organised crime group, which peddled crack cocaine and heroin between Liverpool, Gosport and Plymouth, were sentenced during the two-day hearing at Portsmouth Crown Court.

My Google Alert on 14 February 2025, offered Operation Apollo continues crackdown on County Lines with over 300 years in jail time secured [by the above members] from Cheshire Constabulary. There’s no mention of Scotland in it but it triggered a memory in me. This from 2022:

A series of raids across Scotland last week highlighted the continuing focus of Merseyside’s organised crime groups on the drugs market north of the border. Last week officers from Merseyside Police teamed up with Police Scotland for raids in Peterhead, Aberdeen and in Knowsley. On Wednesday, November 2, Police Scotland raided an address in Peterhead where cocaine and heroin were recovered and a man and woman arrested.

Debate has been raging north of the border over how to handle drug-related deaths, which have remained high for a number of years and show little sign of significantly reducing. Scotland still has the highest number of drug deaths in Europe. In 2021, 1,295 deaths were linked to illicit drugs in Scotland, albeit down from 1,411 in 2020 which represented the highest number on record.

Liverpool based street gangs do not appear to have been phased by the misery, death and addiction on the streets of Glasgow and other Scottish cities and towns, however. In 2018, a National Crime Agency (NCA) annual strategic assessment said: “Significant serious organised crime connections exist between Scotland and the north west of England, predominantly Merseyside.

Was any of that reported by BBC Scotland, STV? I can find nothing.

The Liverpool Echo is making a clear causal connection between Liverpool drug gangs, the flood of cheap, more powerful, drugs into Scotland and our still far too high drug deaths. Why are Scotland’s media ignoring that?

To what extent is BBC Scotland informing us on the above dangers?

Nearly four years since they could last bear to tentatively [they don’t mention where the drugs are coming from] link Scotland’s drug deaths to the broad shoulders of the Union and its pockets stuffed with cheap new more powerful drugs killing addicts from Gretna to Thurso.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002lvf5/highland-cops-series-3-4-the-surprise-monkey-raid

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