When The Sun visited as part of its Hooked series, which reveals the drug epidemics in towns up and down the nation, former heroin addict Chris Gibson, 46, told us: "The crackdown has helped but heroin is still a big problem here.
Wandering near the homes built for shipyard workers on Barrow Island, one heroin user told how he injects heroin up to five times a day to feed his habit.
A few years ago the shipbuilding hub was labelled the "drugs capital of the north", where people were more likely to die from drugs than those in nearby Manchester, Liverpool or Lancaster.
I was one of the lucky ones to make it away from drugs.
County lines drugs gangs smuggle in heroin and crack cocaine from Manchester and Liverpool, often using children to deliver the goods.
