Let’s show way on safe drug rooms

ANY downturn in the rate of drug deaths in Scotland is to be welcomed.

But yesterday’s revelations showed, nonetheless, that more than 1000 Scots died in just nine months.

The death rate is still 15 times the European average, so there will be no need for bunting coming out at present, particularly in communities worst hit by the unending cycle of overdoses.

Angela Constance’s reign as drugs minister has been characterised by fullblooded pledges to Holyrood about concrete plans for change.

She has been armed with funding, in a way her anaemic predecessors were not.

Constance has not been required to make excuses or point to an “ageing cohort” of drug users that will, at some point, die off. She has concerned herself with action, with plans that are effective and with value for money in schemes that can be implemented quickly and which can improve going forward.

If the drugs minister wishes to truly prove herself as a dynamic leader who gets things done, the door is wide open.

The provision of drug consumption rooms (DCRs) – or safer drug consumption facilities or overdose prevention centres – has continued to linger, more as an emblem of constitutional division between Holyrood and Westminster than a concrete measure to reduce drugs deaths in Scotland.

The Lord Advocate has suggested the NHS in Scotland can bring forward proposals with a standard operating procedure agreeable to police.

If Scotland doesn’t bring forward its own DCRs there’s a very real possibility these will open in England, courtesy of a forward thinking police commissioner, in defiance of Westminster.

The Scottish Government should not be seen to drag its heels on this issue.

If DCRs are to be a thing in the UK, let’s not see them happen in England first.

What would that say about our own treatment of this national emergency?