The Scottish Executive has launched a huge campaign to highlight the dangers of smoking heroin.

Many people believe that as long as they are not injecting, they are in control. But the truth is that smoking the drug is often the first step to addiction. Here, we talk to people who can testify to the devastating effects that smoking heroin can have on the user, their families and their friends...

Comedienne Janey Godley lost her beloved cousin Sammy Johnstone to heroin five years ago. And to this day, she says she is still angry at him. She said: "It completely shocked and angered me that after everything we went through and after everybody we saw die from heroin, he died in that way.

"We were always very anti-heroin in our community because we had seen so much of the suffering it causes but it still wasn't enough to stop him."

Sammy and Janey were brought up together in the Shettleston area of Glasgow and had tough childhoods. Janey's mum was murdered and Sammy's parents killed themselves within three years of each other but never did Janey think she would lose Sammy to heroin.

The 44-year-old mum-of-one said: "I had a tough time growing up and I have never tried it, so I don't think Sammy's background is to blame. But I had thought that seeing all the people die would have been a big enough deterrent for him. "Where we grew up, there was barely a woman over 40 who hadn't lost a child to heroin. It was like a war had come along and claimed an entire generation."

Janey first realised Sammy had a problem when he couldn't pay money he owed her.

She said: "I knew he smoked dope but it was only when he couldn't give me the tenner he was clutching in his hand that I knew he was into more. He told me he hadn't eaten in days"I told him I would feed him but he still couldn't give up that tenner because in his eyes that was his next fix. It was a pitiful sight. In the end, he had to throw it on the kitchen table and run out because it was so difficult for him."

Watching someone she loved succumb to heroin addiction broke Janey's heart.

She said: "Sammy was like the wee brother I never had. And before he started smoking heroin, he had a good life."

Janey was running a bar in the east end of Glasgow and she managed to get Sammy a job in the pub in a bid to boost his sense of self-worth and help him break his habit. And for a while, it seemed to work She recalled: "He would help me out in the pub and I remember how we would laugh and sing along to the jukebox when we were cashing up at night. Then I helped him to get a job driving emergency doctors out to incidents in the night and he loved that. But once he started smoking, I felt like I didn't know him any more."

Sammy moved out of Janey's flat and she lost contact with him. In time, he started injecting and fell into crime to feed his habit. His last days were spent in a homeless hostel. He died in 2000 at the age of 35 after injecting infected heroin, just one of 18 addicts who suffered the same fate in Scotland within weeks of each other.

According to the latest figures from the Scottish Executive - which cover 2004 - 52,000 Scots are smoking heroin.
And among those in that group who are aged under 20 in that group, 70 per cent are choosing to smoke the drug, the same path that led Janey's cousin to his death.

Janey said: "Sammy had so much going for him - his death was such a waste."