ABSTRACT
Introduction During the early 1980s widespread heroin use was found, for the first time, in many UK cities and nearby towns. Estimates of the numbers involved during the mid-1980s vary between 100 and 150 thousand users (in Scotland, England and Wales, as Northern Ireland was unaffected). The social profile of these new users was remarkably consistent. They were from the social margins. One of the most detailed studies during this period was undertaken in Wirral, Merseyside, in N.W. England. This chapter re-describes and updates the key findings of this four-year study (see Parker et al., 1988) but situates them in the broader epidemiology of heroin outbreaks or 'epidemics'.
