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Splash featuring comatose drug users is named top front page

A controversial front page picturing two drug users comatose on the streets of Dundee at 5.30pm in the afternoon has been named the best of 2014.

The DC Thomson owned Dundee Evening Telegraph took home the award for Front Page of the Year for its ‘Beyond Belief’ splash at today’s Regional Press Awards in London.

It told the story of the horrific scene faced by a young Dundee woman as she left her flat to find a man and woman lying unconscious in the street with needles in their hands.

The splash provoked varying responses on Twitter with some readers saying the paper had depicted the pair as “sub-human” but it opened a debate on the city’s attitude to drugs.

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The 30-year-old woman and 33-year-old man depicted in the front page were later treated in hospital.

Both had their trousers pulled down and it is thought they had been injecting drugs into their groin areas.

Commenting on the front page, the Press Awards judges said: “It had the shock value and was a powerful and pertinent sign of the times.

“It was salutary and shocking and the editor should be praised for having the courage to print an image that was certain to provoke.”

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