A NEW study by Glasgow Caledonian University, of 10-15 per cent of dependent drug users, confirms that the thousands of people trapped in drug dependency would welcome and use drug consumption rooms if they were available in Glasgow city centre ("Study finds ‘compelling’ case for safe drug-taking facilities", The Herald, April 22). Scotland has the highest rate of drug deaths of any country in Europe, with 1,187 deaths at the last count, a 27 per cent rise on the year before.
Unfortunately, decisions about drugs laws reside in the Tory-led Westminster Parliament, which for years has adhered to failed US approaches and refused to discuss or take seriously that there are other solutions.
Research across the world has already proved the case for drug consumption rooms, where users can bring their own drugs to use them as safely as is possible, acknowledging that it is never completely safe. Such facilities tempt addicts towards help they did not access before.
Those using such facilities in other countries very quickly discover that they are able to successfully engage with the other sorts of professional help to keep safe and support them to find routes out of their serious addictions. For many, this helping hand can start to address the depth of an addict's problems, which almost always is associated with undiagnosed, serious mental health problems often stemming from adverse childhood experiences. Most of these negative experiences are based in the poverty they were born into, as well as mental ill-health and addictions in their own families and communities.
Glasgow Tory MSP Annie Wells, whose constituency covers one of the worst-affected areas for drug abuse in Glasgow, said: "This research fails to address the point that the vast majority of people with addictions want help to get off drugs." That is a mantra that the Tories have stuck to for years. Of course it is true that most seriously addicted drug misusers want to get off drugs. However, wanting to get off their addictions and being able to get off them are two very different things. Celebrities and thousands of others who have the means can book in any time to Harley Street and other private addiction clinics for a month or two. They can then return to their well-funded lifestyles, until they need a top-up rehabilitation break.
Ms Wells's constituents do not have that escape route. Even if they do successfully rehabilitate themselves, they will return to a community of high unemployment, with few community social facilities, poor housing, few shops, and decades of poverty that has brought with it very high levels of ill-health and early deaths from many causes.
When is the Westminster Government going to realise that the death toll it is perpetuating amongst those trapped in addiction must stop? Surely by now it should know that solutions to drug misuse in different countries and nations need different culturally-appropriate solutions. Even if it wants to continue its ill-judged failed policies in other parts of the UK, it should not impose on Scotland's addicts policies that are increasing their death rates.
The UK Government has nothing to lose in allowing Scotland to try to find its own solutions.
Max Cruickshank, Glasgow G12.
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