Drugs blame

Jane Lax (Letters, December 17) blames the Scottish Government for Scotland’ s high drug death rate. A closer look reveals three things. First, the Scottish Government wants to treat drug use as a public health issue, whereas the UK Government insist son treating it as a criminal justice matter. In November 2019 the cross-party Scottish Affairs Committee called for rethinking drugs policy, including decriminalising drugs for personal use, introducing safe consumption rooms and making drug deaths a public health emergency. The UK government rejected this in favour of continuing the failed “war on drugs” approach. The Home Office blocked an application for a safe consumption facility in Glasgow, despite evidence from Australia and Denmark that they have reduced drugrelated death sand the transfer of blood-borne viruses, improved access to primary care and have not caused a rise in drug use or local crime.

Second, UK economic policies in the 1980s contributed to the current crisis. Drug deaths in Scotland are dis prop ortionately among older drug users who began using heroin in the Eighties and Nineties under Tor y and New Labour economic policies that failed to invest in communities, and drug policies that treated drug users as criminals. Older drug addicts are more susceptible to respiratory and liver diseases and blood-borne viruses, increasing their chances of premature death. Last year, more than two thirds of drug-related deaths were aged between 35 and 54.

Third, the Scottish Government is doing its b est to address the problem within UK Government constraints. It exceeded its standard that 90 per cent of people referred for drug treatment should wait no longer than three weeks. Between July and September 2019,95 percent waited three weeks or less. Rather than trying to score political points over preventable deaths, pursuing an evidence- based drugs policy would reduce deaths not only in Scotland but throughout the UK.

LEAH GUNN BARRETT Merchiston Crescent, Edinburgh