STAN Grodynski in Saturday’s letters page makes his usual spirited defence of the SNP in the light of Scotland’s tragic and increasing total of drug deaths. He actually makes a far better job of defending the situation than SNP Health Secretary Neil Gray made in a recent series of TV and radio interviews. Mr Gray boldly claimed his government was “on the right course” in tackling drug addiction when drug deaths in Scotland last year had in fact risen by 121. I wonder what the families of those real people behind the statistics thought as they heard Mr Gray’s words.
Deaths have been rising since 1997, but what really stands out is the rapid acceleration which coincided with our government cutting drug service budgets. Over the following five years, deaths nearly doubled. Nicola Sturgeon herself admitted the government had “taken [its] eyes off the ball”.
READ MORE: Holyrood’s powers to reduce drug death toll are strictly limited
There is no doubt that drug deaths and poverty are linked in a deadly embrace and have been since the days of Margaret Thatcher, but England has around the same proportion of regular drug users as Scotland yet fatalities are lower.
Mr Gray denied addicts were being refused rehabilitation and kept on methadone, but was seriously embarrassed when a reporter showed him an interview with an addict with just that experience. Methadone was implicated in 514 deaths last year, it is now a greater danger than heroin, yet it is still the SNP’s main treatment for addicts like the person in the interview who wanted rehab and got a heroin substitute instead.
Work is now well under way to create the UK’s first sanctioned drugs consumption room at the Hunter Street Health Centre in the east end of Glasgow. Glasgow Health and Social Care Partnership will cover the costs of redesigning a building, creating a reception and injecting area with booths as well as treatment rooms and a recovery area. The Scottish Government has agreed to provide a budget of £2.3 million a year for three years.
READ MORE: Can Scotland solve the drugs deaths crisis without decriminalisation?
It would seem unrealistic to think that any drug users from outwith the east end of Glasgow will travel to this facility. As users will have to bring their own supply of drugs to inject, so there will be no reduction in the profits of the local drug dealers. One could argue that with the decrease in drug deaths forecast as a result of this facility, their clients will live longer and generate even greater profits for the dealers and the criminal wholesalers of these concoctions of unknown quality who care nothing for their end users/customers. It seems to give a nod of government approval to the illicit drugs “industry”. It sends out a subtle message that the consumption of contaminated opiates is now almost acceptable. It appears to be a small-scale, headline-grabbing sticking plaster for what is a massive international problem.
A cynical person might suggest it is a way of avoiding the real but more expensive solution to the problem, which involves providing a much larger number of drug rehabilitation places designed to get users off drugs and not encourage them to continue to take more under Scottish Government supervision.
Mr Grodynski states that the Scottish Government still does not have the power to decriminalise drugs. I suspect that at least some of the adult population of Scotland might say “thank God for that”.
Brian Lawson
Paisley
SCOTLAND’S drug misuse deaths crisis, known in England as drug death poisonings, was in the news last week with a 12% increase from the previous year. These are people, not numbers. I am not the only one who despairs that since Nicola Sturgeon admitted she and her SNP government took their eye of the ball there has been one hapless minister after another.
Neil Gray, who now covers the whole health portfolio, has taken charge, spouting superlatives and announcing projects from the same limited funding over and over again. This has not and will not save lives, Mr Gray.
I did not bother to read the content of Saturday’s letter from Stan Grodynski, given the cut of his jib is repetitive and self-serving on behalf of his beloved SNP. But I am sure the heading is representative of what Stan has said before: wrong then wrong now.
READ MORE: Gerry Hassan: SNP conference is a chance for the party to kickstart long-overdue change
Of course, were Westminster to legally regulate drugs currently prescribed by the Misuse of Drugs Act (1971) and otherwise, this would be a useful tool in addressing problematic drug use and reclassifying it as a health issue, not criminalising young and indeed other people. The prisons are full!
So to Stan, John Swinney, Neil Gray others I say, re-read The Scotland Act. Therein you will see screaming out of the pages at you are devolved powers including but not limited to opportunities to tackle poverty, unemployment, health, education, housing, justice and local government. Abject failures by the SNP in those areas are the main cause of our drugs deaths here. As my granny would have said, “take a tellin”.
My advice to the SNP: prepare for a bigger kicking from the electorate in 2026 than you suffered only a few weeks ago, if you don’t change. My Labour Party should pay heed too, as their performance in the drugs space is nothing to write home about.
Douglas McBean
Edinburgh
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