THE former head of the Scottish Government’s drug death taskforce has accused the SNP of spending taxpayer's money on “politically motivated” projects.
Professor Catriona Matheson suggested a scheme to distribute grants as part of the National Mission to tackle Scotland's appallingly high drug death rate, favoured residential rehabilitation.
The Stirling University academic, who specialises in substance use, said this was despite a lack of evidence to back up the efficacy of this approach.
The money, being distributed on behalf of ministers by the Corra Foundation, comes from the Improvement Fund, one of the key measures announced in 2021 by Nicola Sturgeon.
The money is to “support drug service resources, particularly organisations which deliver services that lead to fast and appropriate access to treatment and collaborative approaches that help people to address the underlying challenges that they face.”
However, according to the Daily Record, Prof Matheson has quit her role on the Corra Foundation’s panel over the way decisions were made to award the grants.
In a letter to the foundation’s acting chief executive Carolyn Sawers, the Stirling University academic said: “This fund was clearly flawed from the outset which made the processes of fairly reviewing applications impossible.
"It favoured projects related to residential rehabilitation, even though there is no evidence-based practice…available to benchmark such proposals against.”
She adds: “In accepting to administer the fund, Corra has perpetuated the wrong premise that residential rehab is an evidence-based approach to reduce drug-related deaths.”
Prof Matheson also claims two Scottish Government officials on the Corra panel voted on allocations despite admitting to knowing nothing about the topic.
She says final spending decisions went to drugs death minister, Angela Constance, adding it “allows the potential for politically motivated decisions”.
In response, Ms Sawers said: “The minister did not seek to amend any of the decisions that were reached through the decision-making process.”
Prof Matheson stepped down from her role as the chair of the taskforce at the end of last year.
Along with vice chair, the former senior police officer Neil Richardson, she accused the government of rushing the taskforce’s programme with a focus on “meeting targets, rather than achieving sustainable change”.
It came after Ms Constance, who was put in charge of drugs policy in December 2020 after the First Minister sacked Joe FitzPatrick, ordered the taskforce to produce a blueprint for urgent reform by this summer, months earlier than expected.
The taskforce was set up in July 2019 amid spiralling drugs deaths, which then stood at 1187 for the year.
Last year the number rose to 1339.
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