Drug addiction

Brian Monteith accuses the First Minister of focusing on economics, not drug deaths (Scotsman, 18 March), but he fails to acknowledge they are connected.

Addicts aren’t born, but made. The precursor to addiction is dislocation – a loss of psychological, social and economic integration into communityand culture that engenders a sense of exclusion, isolation and powerlessness.

Scotland is riddled with examples. The Highland Clearances destroyed traditional clan structures, culture and language. Hundreds of thousands of Scots were evicted from their land and forced to emigrate. A Highlands administrator at the time wrote: “The children of those who are removed from the hills will lose all recollection of the habits and customs of their fathers.”

Then there was the 1980s de industrialisation of Scotland that caused massive economic and social dislocation. Whole communities were hollowed out, unemployment soared and with it, hopelessness and despair. The UK failed to create alternatives for these communities, so poverty and its associated problems – trauma, mental illness and drug addiction – became entrenched across generations.

It doesn’t need to be this way. Slovakia, Sweden and The Netherlands don’t have high drug death rates. They prioritise social spending so that poverty and inequality are far lower than in the UK. If Scotland is to address its social problems, it, not London, needs to control its economy so it works for the Scottish people. Another welcome benefit of restoring Scotland’s sovereignty would ending England’s addiction to our resources, helping it, for once, to stand on its own two feet.

Leah Gunn Barrett

Edinburgh