lewis smith

One of the things that I talked a lot about with my farther and what stands out most in my mind are our conversations on how life is and how one can live it. more>>

dr noel crane

Many thanks for the opportunity to say a few words about Ian’s time in, and contact with, North West Wales. more>>

 Dr. Jennifer Hill

I hope that he and the staff of SMS know how much I valued his wisdom and expertise.  I shall never forget how happy he looked at his retirement celebration.  He will be sadly missed.

Jerry Stokes

"Passionate about what mattered, irreverant about what didn't, intolerant of bullshit but always humourous. I'll miss a good colleague and good company. Wherever he's gone, he'll be stirring them up. Jerry Stokes"

Helen Boyle

I first met Ian in 1992 on the MASH van. I think Ian had just started work at Trafford SMS and I had just started volunteering for MASH. We spent many a night putting the world to rights on those cold nights, this was when MASH had only an old ‘noise pollution’ van to work from – how times have changed!

Over the course of the next 12 years I would come into contact with Ian many times. I attend both the ‘Recognition and management of substance misuse’ and ‘Drugs, Crime and Community’ courses run by Trafford SMS at MMU and lead by Ian. I think it is safe to say that many people benefited from Ian’s inspiring lecturing.

It is not often that you can say about somebody that the world would be a different place without him in it, but the world will be a different place without Ian and the drug field has suffered a great loss. He was a beacon of light and the place will not be as bright now that he has gone.

I will remember Ian as someone who was bright, funny and a great storyteller. He was able to remember the strangest facts and figures about drugs and would entertain people for hours with them. I think, for me, I will remember him as a great service user advocate. His work with users was brilliant, even I chuckled at some comments made in Monkey Magazine which I think Ian was responsible for – which I am sure, as a commissioner of services, I should not have been laughing at.

My thoughts and sympathies are with this friends and family at this very difficult time.

The working girls of Cheetham HIll, Jo p & Candy @ STASH
 
I remember the first article me and the working girls wrote for Monkey
 
" 40 Reasons Why Whores are my Heroes"
 
For both myself and the women it was the first time that we had been able to express any positevness about sex work and challenge whore stigma. It was the first time that we had been given a voice and more importantly we wern't censored. Women were empowered by the writing and publication of monkey which gave them the chance to document their own experiences and take back control from the normal academic/media publications on sex work.
 
"it was sound that we could put our views accross and have them heard, you gave us that chance to do that Ian, respect for that" "so if your're looking down Ian, nice one"
(Sue, Monkey writing group)
 
 Love & thanks from the working girls of Cheetham HIll, Jo p & Candy @ STASH

Claire Hoskins

"No-one else could have got away with introducing myself and Jim as a couple of cartoon characters - Rosie and Jim he used to call us and found the pair of us highly amusing.  And I still have the post card he bought me of 'the girl who was always looking for love'.  He was so observant.  I am doing a teaching course at college at the moment and they told me to remember someone whose teaching style I admired.  Of course, I immediately thought of Ian.  No-one could ever be as interesting, capturing and passionate as Ian Smith."

Simon Morton

I feel slightly strange posting something as sensitive as this on the web site but...I'm sad to say that the co-author of Heroin Century, Ian Smith, died this weekend. Ian and Tom Carnwath's book, as many people will know, is absolutely terrific and received rave reviews. I was fortunate to work with Ian (and Tom) for 4 years at Trafford Substance Misuse Services. Ian came resolutely from the perspective of the patient in the drug treatment equation, and was fearless in speaking up for drug users, even when it meant going against the grain of current political fashions and directives. As anyone who saw him speak at conferences, or indeed who was lucky enough to know him, will testify: he was sharp as anything and was hilariously funny to boot.

Steve Simmons

Karl Marx was by all accounts a grumpy git who drove his family mad was known to lapse into occasional bouts of heavy drinking, but also had an amazing brain, some top ideas, influenced, informed and inspired many others and was known to insight the odd rebellion!!

You will be missed but your ideas will live on and be put into practice by others.

Thanks for all your support, encouragement and tireless work for the drug users of this country, in particular those in Cheetham Hill, Salford and Leigh.

With Love

Steve Simmons, On Behalf of the STASH/Waterloo / Wigan and Leigh.