CAMPAIGNERS told MSPs of their experiences with drug addiction this morning, with most stressing that drug use is a “symptom” of deeper issues.

Scotland recorded its highest ever number of drug-related deaths last year, with 1339 people dying of drug misuse. The country has the highest drug death rate in Europe.

This morning Peter Krykant, a campaigner who ran a safe consumption space in Glasgow, explained that he felt the issue is not drugs themselves – rather how they are policed in combination with an unregulated market.

“If you go and get a substance which is controlled by a criminal gang, and you have no idea what’s on it, you are dicing with death every time you use it,” he told the Holyrood Criminal Justice Committee. “And that’s where the real issues are.”  

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The activist said he feels what “catapults” people into addiction is often the criminalised element, explaining  he’d been arrested for possessing a small quantity of cannabis at a young age, which led him into the criminal justice system.

“It didn’t help in way, shape, or form with what led to real problematic substance use for me,” he added.

“It’s not about substances, it’s about how we regulate substances,” he went on. “If we had a regulated market, so many people would not be dying right now. People are dying because of criminal gangs controlling the market, it’s that simple.”

Louise Stevenson, a lived experience participant with voluntary organisation Sacro, agreed that “many things going on in my life” led to problematic drug use.

“I do agree with Peter – safe consumption rooms, vans, ambulances, whatever you want to call it. I think that is what we need in this country,” she told the committee.

“Who wants to walk past trees and see needles sticking out? Who wants to see a person lying next to a bush, overdosed? Nobody wants to see that.

"For me if we’ve got safe consumption rooms … you don’t want to see people lying there dead, and we could have saved that person with Naloxone, but we never because we haven’t got Naloxone and there isn’t any safe consumption rooms.”

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Later, Natalie Logan MacLean, chief executive officer of Sustainable Interventions Supporting Change Outside (SISCO), explained how campaigns telling people just to say no to drugs didn’t help and instead “created stigma”.

“I think we continue to get lost. People are already lost. Drugs are absolutely a symptom. They’re not the cause. When we look at addiction, most people addicted to substances come from deprivation.”

Logan MacLean added that in her own experience, the system failed her by removing her from family members which led to traumatisation.

“Drugs are just the symptom, we need to look at the cause,” she stressed.

The conversation came after Holyrood last night unanimously agreed a Scottish Government motion which stressed the importance of “ensuring a person-centred approach to supporting those with substance use and mental health needs”.

A Conservative amendment, which had called for a legal right to recovery to be introduced to help “tackle Scotland’s ongoing drug deaths crisis”, was defeated by 65 votes to 29 with 20 abstentions.

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A Labour amendment which highlighted the importance of tackling the “underlying drivers” of drug use and expressed “regrets that mental health services have been under-resourced for too long”, with this resulting in “unacceptable waiting times” for treatment, was then rejected by 49 votes to 65.

It was recently decided in Scotland that people in personal possession of Class A drugs could receive a police warning rather than facing prosecution.