UK old-timers heroin history lessons

[cz-one]

I had a fascinating insight into the london heroin scene of the late 60's/early 70's,from a rare occurence,a junkie still alive and using despite being in his sixties! This was a time when your friendly family doctor would prescribe addicts heroin/cocaine/methamphetamine/barbiturates,some in huge quantities,with the sole aim of preventing an illegal black market run by criminals! but of course what happened was, all the excess ended up being sold on and created a black market,which led to the govt.cracking down,and a hardcore of a handful of london dr's were struck off cause of their prescribing,he said what used to happen was,this sprightly old dr.in his 60's,would sit down in a cafe in piccadilly underground station,whilst a queue would form round the block and he would write scripts on napkins and backs of receipts,for a weeks supply of jacks(10mg heroin tablets,and from where the term jacking up comes from),cocaine hcl ampoules,and methedrine amps(methamphetamine)etc.,and all of it FREE!!! The end came with huge influxes of americans and canadians coming over on hearing of free drugs,and the number of registered addicts and black market diversions of these drugs exploding. The irony of it is,that whilst it did stop illicit heroin traffic and kept the number of addicts low(hundreds),once it was stopped,it led to the beginnings of the huge illicit trade and an explosion of addicts cause of that uncontrolled availability,to what you have now in the uk.
Sorry to waffle on a bit,but i find the history of it all at street level fascinating,and i think it'd make a good read,getting stories from the old-timers from NYC/london/paris/amsterdam etc.about how they used to score,how much it was,what they got,how they took it,busts,dope spots,the grim war stories,and so on,just a thought,anyone out there got any interesting tales ?