The new Scottish Tory leader says mainstream society in Scotland is being “contaminated” by drugs money and official policy on drugs and addiction has to change to tackle it.

Russell Findlay told The Herald the Scottish Government was taking the wrong approach and failing to take on organised crime gangs and the accountancy firms and law firms who facilitate them.

“These people contaminate - and that’s the right word for it - mainstream society,” he said. “The property market in Glasgow, many of the transport businesses, other businesses. Football clubs are being contaminated by drugs money and it’s disgusting.”  

Mr Findlay, 51, who was elected leader of the Scottish Tories in September to succeed Douglas Ross, said he had tried drugs at university as part of “youthful experimentation” but that his focus was on hard drug addiction which was ruining lives and killing people.

Read the full interview

“It’s about tackling the organised crime gangs and their money men in all the accountancy firms and law firms in Glasgow that support them,” he said. “And dealing with those who need help. The SNP aren’t giving them the help they need.”

Mr Findlay, who was elected MSP for the West of Scotland in 2021, said he was opposed to decriminalisation and concerned about the plans for a drug consumption in Glasgow.

“I have a major problem with a society that’s cutting money for education and sports centres and libraries,” he says, “but finding tens of millions of pounds to say, in a poor part of Glasgow, ‘come along and take drugs’. If this is some amazing transformational thing, I dare say there’ll be widespread buy-in but I have my doubts.”

He said the solution was longer prison sentences for serious offenders linked to drugs and sustained rehabilitation while they were in prison.  “I’m a pragmatist,” he said.  “Prison can work but some of the sentences I’ve seen recently for high-end drug dealers have been shocking.

“You’ve had almost two decades of the SNP in government talking about prison not working but what they’ve done in that time is next to nothing to address addiction and reoffending for those that are in prison.”