7d. Drugs work? Is getting worried at heart (7) --I-T-S (Is it Opiates?) 8d. Unusual boat and sailor left in stormy mere (10) --M-E-A--- I am nearly done now. Thanks for your help.
I guess by now you will have realised that the place in 12a is in America. Wasn't it George Bernard Shaw that described us as two nations divided by a common language ?!! (I don't want to start a fight - Wilde and Churchill have also been credited with this.)