Free NHS heroin for addicts? The white flag’s flying high in the war on drugs

SINCE the 1960s, an endless procession of pop stars and celebrities have been pressing for the legalisation of cannabis.

They tend not to mention that in many cases those who began smoking the drug ‘graduated’ to more lethal substances, and paid the price.

Fast-forward to 2018 and that campaign is still in operation, with rallies in Glasgow and London last Friday to mark so-called ‘420 Day’.

The derivation of the name is a matter of debate – it could refer to the time when US high school students smoked cannabis after finishing their lessons, or the old police code for a drugs bust in California.

Either way, the occasion was marked on Glasgow Green by the ‘420 Hempstock Festival’.

It was an opportunity to ‘light up’ in public, and in Glasgow and London many did so – with police standing nearby as plumes of pungent smoke filled the air.

About 200 attended in Glasgow and three were arrested for drug-related offences, while in Hyde Park there were no arrests, even though possession of the Class B drug technically carries a maximum jail sentence of five years.

It’s no real surprise that police were so relaxed about this mass defiance of the law, given that in Scotland, Recorded Police Warnings (RPWs) are now handed out for cannabis possession, meaning a full criminal record is avoided.

By coincidence, the day before 420 Day, proposals for a heroin ‘shooting gallery’ in Glasgow won the backing of MSPs – despite having been blocked by the Prime Minister and Lord Advocate James Wolffe, QC.

He had pointed out that it would be illegal to let drug addicts inject their own heroin under medical supervision in a scheme aimed at ensuring discarded syringes are kept off the streets and reducing overdose deaths, currently at record levels.

Yet, substantial legal problems aside, this is an idea that is every bit as absurd as the Government seeking to help alcoholics by inviting them into a taxpayer-funded centre where they can drink in a safe environment – with medical help on standby if needed.

This hasn’t deterred Public Health Minister Aileen Campbell from making a fresh plea to the UK Government, demanding it backs the proposed Glasgow base.

In the interim, plans are being formulated by health and council chiefs in the city for a centre where medicalgrade heroin will be administered to addicts.

This means they will get heroin from medics, with the NHS acting in effect as the drug-dealer – a practice that is already legal.

But the SNP wants the law to be changed to allow the creation of the facility as originally conceived – with addicts injecting their own drugs in the safety of a special clinic.

We are asked to believe that a bold administration, confronted with a social catastrophe, is straining every sinew to solve the problem (after more than a decade of failed strategies), only to be stymied as usual by the lack of ‘progressive’ thinking in London.

Abuse

But this is also the Government that devised RPWs, quietly rolled out by Justice Secretary Michael Matheson, a move which United Nations (UN) drugs consultant Dr Ian Oliver has warned is likely to fuel cannabis abuse.

Anyone who raises concern about cannabis is seen, certainly by those at the 420 Day rallies, as a Puritanical moraliser.

But it has been linked with mental illness and is a ‘gateway’ drug for harder substances, such as heroin.

Even the ‘progressives’ gathering in public places to smoke ‘weed’ under the noses of police would acknowledge that heroin is deadly – stoking a 23 per cent rise in drugrelated deaths in the past year. But there have been conflicting official signals on heroin: back in 2008, the Scottish Advisory Committee on Drug Misuse (SACDM), a powerful group of government advisers, said drug addicts should be allowed to continue looking after their children, as many remain ‘effective’ parents.

Its report dropped the term substance ‘misuse’ in favour of ‘use’ to acknowledge that illegal drugs can often be used ‘safely’ – and to avoid stigmatising addicts.

The SACDM experts also said most people are substance users to some extent because they ‘use’ alcohol or caffeine (while failing to mention, of course, that neither of these are illegal).

Meanwhile, official statistics show more than eight out of ten people convicted of drugs offences are spared prison, and the length of jail terms for those locked up has hit a record low.

The justice system is raising the white flag on drugs, facilitated by a government that seems only to have woken up to the horror of heroin fatalities after 11 years of ‘parking’ addicts on methadone, the heroin substitute.

Against this backdrop, the SNP is casting itself as a reforming government determined to challenge the status quo, with a project that Scotland’s top law officer has ruled illegal – and which Dr Oliver has warned would breach international conventions.

This has been no obstacle for MSPs, who have become adept at a kind of kamikaze legislation that is fundamentally disconnected from reality: witness the anti-Brexit Continuity Bill, which won parliamentary backing despite being deemed potentially unlawful by Holyrood’s Presiding Officer.

It is now in the hands of the Supreme Court in London, which issued a devastating judgment against the SNP’s Named Person policy in 2016. Only in this alternate universe would the morally bankrupt idea of a heroin shooting gallery hold such appeal.

In Vancouver, where a similar project has been running since 2003, police have reported addicts ‘in the lanes/ on the sidewalks and fighting with each other over drugrelated matters’.

People are also seen ‘urinating and defecating all over the place’, while there is ‘open drug use – both injecting and smoking of drugs’.

In a 2007 study, published in the Journal of Global Drug Policy and Practice, drugs expert Dr Colin Mangham questioned the claim that ‘no overdose deaths occurred at the site’ and – perhaps most shockingly – drug deaths actually rose after the centre was launched.

It is highly unlikely that any of the most outspoken supporters of the ‘safer consumption’ facility live anywhere near the proposed sites in Glasgow city centre where it would operate.

Stigma

They are given succour by Police Scotland, which earlier this year said the country’s drug problem should be treated as a ‘health issue’ and claimed that ‘by raising awareness of stigma and the negative impacts of stigmatising attitudes, we can influence behaviour and create an inclusive environment’.

The shooting gallery represents the apotheosis of that ‘inclusive’ society, where addicts would feed their habit with the blessing of the state as their children play in a nearby crèche.

There is one group that would feature prominently in that progressive, modern and destigmatised environment – the dealers, who would find a ready-made customer base in a convenient city centre location.

We can only hope that Theresa May, a former home secretary, holds firm in her opposition to the relaxation of drug laws for which the SNP is now lobbying.

The reality is that this supposed exercise in crusading social reform represents an act of craven surrender in the war on drugs.