ON Channel 4 News on Monday evening, I watched a report by Ciaran Jenkins on the drug death crisis in Dundee. The item was shocking and disturbing and highlighted the hopelessness and misery that drugs cause to addicts, their families and society as a whole.

Ciaran handled the reporting in a sensitive, careful manner. I did not feel, however, that Jon Snow – who chaired a studio interview with Aileen Campbell, minister for public health and sport – treated the issue of drug-taking in an appropriate way. He was so busy trying to score points and blame the SNP government at Holyrood that he did not listen carefully to and respond to the points being articulated by Aileen Campbell.

Fortunately, when he interviewed the former drug user in the studio, who is now studying at a university in England, he seemed to listen more carefully and handle his interviewee with a little more sensitivity.

Over the years I have watched the blight that drugs have placed on our society. I have read about new initiatives, police activity and as far as I can judge absolutely nothing has made a significant difference regarding improvement here in the United Kingdom.

Headlines screaming that Scotland has the worst drug problem in the European Union do nothing to solve the problem. Indeed when making comparisons we have to ensure that we are treating like with like. And we are not. Some European countries deal with their addicts in a much more humane way. Instead of criminalising them, they are treated in “fix rooms”, where users can take drugs using clean syringes which can be safely disposed of. They are also channelled towards the medical profession and other agencies that assist them to become clean.

In Glasgow, the city’s Health and Social Care Partnership has serious plans to create a facility, similar to that of Copenhagen, where a drugs worker is quoted as saying: “We have had hundreds of overdose situations, and not a single one has been fatal”. The Scottish Government backed the plan. Drugs law, however, is a matter for Westminster, and the plan was overruled late last year.

How depressing that following years of wasted lives, police resources and ineffectual plans, Westminster has nothing better to offer than to deny Glasgow City Council and the Scottish Government a chance to improve the situation.

In an inclusive society, all lives matter. It was clear from the reports given by the brave mothers whose addicted daughters died in Dundee that the present approach is failing our addicts. As a society, instead of sensationalising this issue, we should demand a completely different approach.

I Gibson
Newburgh

NEVER has one seen such a narrowly focused and prejudged news item on drug addiction, abuse and death from a national broadcaster as that fronted by Jon Snow for Channel 4 News.

When the Scottish public health minister put the situation in historical context, focusing on issues and a population cohort from the 1980s, it was rebuffed by Snow with the comment that the SNP had been in power for ten years now! He seems to forget that the UK governments and parties had been in charge from 1945 until 10 years ago!

John Edgar
Stewarton

CAT Boyd’s column (Why we should not consider ourselves or assume others are ‘victims’, The National, February 20) is the complete polar opposite of something like Andrew Tickell’s (How Scotland’s Christian right lost at politics and learned to love the law, The National, February 16). I’ve had to read both a couple of times but for completely different reasons.

You had Andrew’s personal rant and disgust at a group of people that he obviously detests using the laws which our governments have created to protect what they believe in. Seriously, what’s the point in having a law if it isn’t to be carried out? It shouldn’t take external groups to hold governments to account and make sure they uphold the laws which they or previous governments have created.

How on earth a sensible person can argue that these court cases are a bad thing is beyond me (apart from the wasted costs in expensive fees). If the government of the day doesn’t like a law, it should debate and change it.

Then you have the sensible and articulate words of Cat. It seems as if she’s taken a bit of stick from some people in the past, but in this case is spot on. Every day there is another story of outrage. I’m pretty sure that the vast majority of people don’t care about these and yet they get forced on us and then exaggerated.

Whether its berry-throwing cartoons, not being able to call a child “little monkey” just because they’re a certain colour, demands that all institutions be the same. The story on Notre Dame High School is a prime example (Keeping last girls-only school ‘failing families’, The National, February 20). A spokesperson says its “blatantly unfair” and comes out with “Scotland is supposed to be forward-looking” in reference to the school being a girls-only school – aww diddums... the next high school is less than 700m as the crow flies! If that high school isn’t as good/oversubscribed etc, then get the council to sort it out. Stop being a victim so that you can force views on others. Given the abuse that mainly girls get, perhaps there should be more spilt schools!

Where am I going with this – the press! Can you take what Cat has said, stop making stories where you only make people into victims. Get the bigger picture – being different doesn’t always mean being unequal. Most of these victims are not real victims, and are no more than opportunistically playing on fake outrage. And at the same time don’t give space to anyone that feels the need to write a personal attack on a person/group.

Kenneth Sutherland
Livingston