You can’t solve drugs deaths without fixing the underlying cause

Scotland has a serious problem with drug and alcohol misuse. Deaths from misuse of drugs are increasing. It is welcome that Tory MSPs like Miles seek to do something about this important issue. However it was striking that in his impassioned plea for improved drug treatment and intervention policies, Miles didn’t find space to mention that drug policy is reserved to Westminster, and the Conservative Government he supports has refused to allow initiatives in Scotland that could be effective in tackling the problem of drug misuse in Scotland.

Expecting Scotland to tackle its serious problem with drug use as a health issue, yet without the devolution of drug policy, is like expecting to fight a bacterial infection without being allowed to use antibiotics.

Last year the Home Office refused a request from Glasgow City Council to open a safe consumption room for drugs in Glasgow. The request was backed by the Scottish Government and the local health board. The idea behind the initiative was to provide registered addicts with a safe and clean environment in which to use their own drugs, with the aim of reducing the harm that drug use causes.

An addict using intravenous drugs in such a safe and medically supervised environment is far less likely to die of an accidental overdose. The initiative would also ensure that addicts were using clean and sterile equipment, reducing the health risks of shooting up using dirty needles and preventing the transmission of HIV and other diseases.

READ MORE: Pilot project paves way for drugs treatment breakthrough

The plan would also tackle the dangerous practice of shooting up in public spaces where used needles are left lying around for children to find. If we are serious about tackling drug use as a health issue, instead of merely as a criminal problem, so called fix rooms where addicts can use their own drugs in a safe and controlled way under medical supervision are a tried and tested means of reducing harm.

Such safe rooms have been operating in the Canadian city of Vancouver for some years, where they have a proven record of helping to reduce deaths from drug use and removing drug use from public spaces into a safe and controlled environment. However the Conservative government absolutely refused to countenance the plan in Glasgow, citing legal concerns. That would be the same Conservative Government which has control of drug policy and the ability to change the law if it wanted to. It was more important for Conservative politicians to appear tough on crime than it was to save lives.

Yet there’s another reason why so many Scots are turning to drug and alcohol abuse, and that’s because when people live without hope, they self-medicate.

I spent the 1980s living in Easterhouse, during the Thatcher era. It was a time of mass unemployment. Many of my friends had minor convictions for the kind of idiocy that young lads frequently get involved in.

They knew that with those stains on their records their chances of ever getting a job were as good as zero. So they turned to drugs. Several of them didn’t survive to the end of the decade.

A friend who had a serious problem with intravenous drug use once remarked to me that being a junkie simplified his life. When he wasn’t using he had lots of problems. How to get a job. How to build a decent life. His mother’s poor health. His girlfriend getting pregnant. Paying the rent, paying the electric bill, keeping food on the table.

But when he was using he only had one problem, where to find his next hit. Heroin doesn’t just take you to a temporary reverie of pleasuere where you are cocooned in dreams, it makes you not care about anything else. It makes you not care that you are lying in a puddle of your own waste.

My friend died while he was still in his early 20s, lying on a piss-stained bed with a needle in his arm, choking on his own vomit in a dark flat where the electricity had been cut off.

If a proper drug service had been available, he might still be alive today. Instead he became just another statistic, a casualty of the war on drugs and politicians who seek to be tough on crime.

You can’t tackle Scotland’s problems with drug and alcohol use without tackling the reasons that cause people to live without hope and which drive them to misuse drugs in the first place. You can’t simply separate out drug misuse as a health issue and tackle it in isolation from the wider society which produces a problematic relationship with drugs and alcohol. A holistic approach is required.

Scotland doesn’t have control of the macro-economic levers of government which would allow it to make substantial changes to the social security system, to significantly boost employment opportunities, to make the changes in society necessary to create hope, opportunities, and prospects for people.

I’m certainly not saying that all of Scotland’s problems with drugs are a result of an uncaring Westminster, but it remains a fact that without effective control over the economy, the tax system, and the social security system, the Scottish Government isn’t able to take those steps which would be needed to make a meaningful change in the life circumstances of thousands of people which would prevent them from falling into hopelessness and despair and driving them to self-medicate on drugs or alcohol.

Miles Briggs calls upon SNP ministers to back a new and radical approach to drug addict treatment and recovery, but at the same time doesn’t want to give Scotland the full powers it requires in order to do so. A Scottish Government, of any political hue, will only be able to make a meaningful difference to this country’s problematic relationship with drugs and alcohol when Holyrood has full control over all the levers of government and law that will allow it to do so.

Until such time, all we can do is alleviate some of the symptoms, without being able to treat the underlying causes. Until Scotland has full control over all the factors that lead to drug abuse, more Scottish people will end their tragically short lives like my friend did, alone and in the dark.