FORTUNATELY there was not a heavy object near at hand to throw at my TV set when Tory MSPs Douglas Ross and Annie Wells were recently interviewed about Scotland’s appalling drug death figures.
To see these two pontificate on this subject is the final irony. They are both leftover products from the Thatcher years. Watching them trying to shed crocodile tears on TV with a backdrop of the families of the drug death victims was stomach-churning.
Drug abuse and poverty go hand in hand. Of course not all addicts are poor, but the lack of a job, a stable family life and a decent house to live in go a long way to setting folk on the road that leads to them becoming another sad statistic. All these were stolen from a sizeable chunk of the Scottish population by the acts of successive Tory governments, especially during the Thatcher years.
READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon vows to take action on drug deaths as crisis deepens
It seems these brass-necked Tories are now going to introduce a Right to Recovery Bill, which would enshrine in law the right for someone struggling with addiction to receive the treatment they request. A noble idea perhaps, but one that will come with a cost to the health service, a cost that I hope can be found without cuts to other services.
While any increase in the availability of treatment which would save a single soul from death is to be welcomed, we need to also look at prevention as well as possible cure. Secure, well-paid employment, dry warm homes, good schools, a health service which does not stumble from crisis to crisis would go a long way to preventing drug deaths in the longer term. All of these things are alien ideas to Douglas Ross, Anne Wells and their fellow Tories.
Brian Lawson
Paisley
THE incidence of drug deaths and illegal drug-taking in Scotland is a crisis which needs further urgent action. Nothing should be ignored in the battery of strategies used to save more lives and deal with the misery of illegal drug-taking. In spite of the majority of people in Scotland – including health service providers, the police, and others – waging the war against the evils of illegal drugs in Scotland, we are not allowed to introduce safe supervised therapeutic drug rooms because Westminster won’t allow us to do it! Westminster won’t allow us to do it? Stuff that.
I am sick of being told that we can’t do X and Y because if we do the Scottish Government will end up in a fight with Westminster in courts of law because we have dared to challenge their powers. Well, I can think of no better issue to start with than this one. We have a duty and a mandate to put Scotland first and stand up for what’s in the best interests of our people.
READ MORE: SNP MP Stewart McDonald shares family tragedy in response to drug deaths report
Internationally, enlightened, considered opinion is in favour of supervised therapeutic drug-taking rooms because it is a strategy that works. It’s absurd that in Scotland we are not even permitted to try to use this strategy because Westminster won’t permit us to. Well, now’s the time to go for it and see if they challenge us.
Nicola, stop the drift. If you don’t have the time or inclination, let someone else step up to establish the provisions required. If needs be, table the introduction of emergency legislation to be put and passed in Holyrood – you’ve got the numbers to succeed in doing it. If D Ross, Sarwar and the other wet ones refuse to whole-heartedly support the fight for what’s right, the people of Scotland will see them for what they are and if Johnson and co choose to play the bullying card and go for procedural this, that and the other tactics, so be it.
Anne Thomson
Falkirk
THE drug statistics reported in Saturday’s National are a cause for alarm, but let’s be clear this is a problem IN Scotland not OF Scotland, and what Ross Anderson is correct to point out (Website comments, July 31) is that as drug laws are a UK Government reserved matter this is a UK problem compounded by Westminster’s refusal to go along with proposals from Holyrood to address it.
I do, however, want to take issue with Mr Anderson’s attempt at having things both ways. You can’t, on the one hand, claim that Scotland is a sovereign nation and then, when it suits you, say it is a region of a non-EU country for comparison purposes. By any standards, Scotland is a sovereign nation with history, a separate legal system, its own church, its own culture, national languages, sports teams and its own parliament (even though this is constrained and being further neutered by Westminster).
Indeed, you could make the case that Scotland has more right to call itself a country than England in that the English do not have their own parliament but instead participate in a UK Parliament where seats are also held by representatives of Scotland, Wales and some Northern Ireland counties. The closest England has legally come to having its own parliament since 1707 is with the introduction of EVEL legislation and this, apparently, Michael Gove wants to reverse anyway. Let’s never forget the words in the Declaration of Arbroath or the longstanding fact that the people in Scotland are sovereign – not any king, wannabe dictator or government.
David Cairns
Finavon
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