Iain Whyte: The drug policies aren’t working – we need a new plan
The Evening News front page yesterday led with a bold headline with a “Call to speed up drug centre plan” from “campaigners” who want a drug checking facility and a safe consumption room in Edinburgh.
I say this is bold because it comes, as the Evening News said, after drug deaths in Edinburgh had “soared” by 8.7 per cent to 100 in 2025.
Yet the policy proposals are an escalation of the failed policies that have seen the SNP Scottish Government castigated once again for the worst drug deaths rate in Europe – more than double the rate of the next worst in Estonia.
I would suggest that this statistic alone should lead public policymakers to question the evidence rather continue with a policy that has so obviously failed.
Let’s take drug testing. The National Records of Scotland data showed us that drug deaths in the most deprived areas of Scotland are 15 times the rate in the richest. But who will use a drug testing facility?
The “recreational” middle-class drug user worried about what they have bought? Quite likely. The long-term addict in a deprived neighbourhood with less access to travel and no inclination to give up even a tiny proportion of their drugs for testing? I think not.
Then there’s the drug consumption room. The one in Glasgow is supposed to be a three-year trial. A year in, the drug deaths in Glasgow have risen again.
Most worryingly, similar regimes in Portugal and Canada have come to realise that this uber-liberal approach hasn’t worked. Around the facility residents have complained about anti-social behaviour, public drug taking and drug paraphernalia littering the streets.
None of that seems to matter for the “campaigners” (who are actually organisations paid to undertake the government approach) who want an immediate introduction in Edinburgh.
Tellingly neither the Scottish Government Minister nor the “campaigners” quoted in the Evening News mentioned recovery for addicts or work to reduce illegal drug use.
Anne-Marie Ward of FAVOR UK is a leading advocate of a different approach that places abstinence and recovery at the heart of services for drug users.
In an online article responding to the further increase in drug deaths she wrote: “In almost any other walk of life, persistent failure on this scale would lead to serious questions about leadership, assumptions and accountability … [This] is institutional self-preservation.”
I couldn’t agree more and this shows clearly why change is long overdue.