£20M needed now to fund rehab in Scotland Labour’s push for vital drug cash
LABOUR’S health spokeswoman Monica Lennon has demanded an immediate £20million package to fund residential drug rehabilitation in Scotland.
That sum, which would match the entire budget of the Scottish Drug Deaths Taskforce, reflects the high cost of treatment, which has been all but abandoned in Scotland in recent years, it is claimed.
New drugs policy minister Angela Constance pledged to secure enough funding to bring the country’s rehab services – currently funding 22 beds – up to the European average.
A debate called by Lennon on Scotland’s drug deaths crisis considered that more national and local action is needed to hit back at the crisis, which claimed 1264 lives in 2019.
Lennon said: “Words don’t seem adequate in response to this humanitarian crisis. Recovery activists in Scotland have been telling politicians for years, ‘You keep talking, we keep dying’.
“Tragically, and to our collective shame, they are right.”
Lennon said she believed Constance would work hard to turn things around and Constance said: “I am crystal clear that in order to save lives we need to do more. We need to do it better and we need to do it faster.” She said the government’s response was “bigger and broader” than that of the Drug Deaths Task Force. She said: “The First Minister will make a statement next week laying out how we will achieve a step change in the short, medium and long-term. “This will include a provision to increase the commitment residential rehabilitation, to bring our bed numbers up to the European average. “This is a new portfolio and I would never demur from the importance of resources. “I have been clear in discussions with the First Minister and the Finance Secretary Kate Forbes that the scale of work should not be underestimated. “It will require significant investment over a period of time to affect the change we want.” MSPs had a minute’s silence for the thousands of lives lost to drug deaths at a session of the Scottish Parliament yesterday.