Now addicts right across Scotland set to get free heroin on the NHS
After 1,264 drug deaths and a Minister quitting, is SNP plan really the answer?
FREE heroin could soon be handed to addicts across Scotland under controversial plans to tackle the country’s appalling toll of drug deaths.
It emerged last week that there were 1,264 drugs deaths in Scotland last year – a record high and double the figure in 2014. The rate is also three-and-a-half times higher than that in England and Wales and the worst in Europe.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon described the statistic as ‘indefensible’ and Public Health Minister Joe FitzPatrick ‘agreed’ to resign on Friday.
Now, in a move that could cost the taxpayer millions, the SNP Government is to consider prescribing medical grade heroin to users on the NHS as a ‘matter of urgency’.
Of Scotland’s 1,264 drugs deaths last year, 645 – or 51 per cent – are directly attributed to heroin.
A total of 1,092 – or 86 per cent – of deaths involved all forms of opiates, including heroin.
A heroin-assisted treatment (HAT) scheme was trialled this year in Glasgow, with addicts injecting their
‘It is just allowing people to continue their habit’
NHS heroin in a special clinic under the supervision of doctors.
The scheme has been hailed a success by health bosses and SNP Ministers are now set to draw up plans for such facilities in other parts of the country. By using pure, pharmaceutical-grade heroin in a medical setting, addicts are less likely to overdose or suffer health problems from injecting impure drugs.
They are also less likely to resort to crime to fund their habits. And as they are required to attend the special drug clinic, users can be put in contact with social workers and psychologists to help them address their problems.
However, campaigners fear that handing out free heroin does little to stop addicts from taking drugs.
The move comes after Scotland’s Drugs Death Task Force said that addicts face ‘social stigma’ as bad as ‘sexism and racism’ – and that stereotyping them as ‘feckless’ and ‘immoral’ contributes to deaths.
Ms Sturgeon has now appointed Angela Constance as a dedicated Minister for drugs policy.
A spokesman for the Scottish Government said: ‘She will consider as a matter of urgency how heroin-assisted treatment can be scaled up.
‘Scotland faces a public health emergency in terms of drug-related deaths and the introduction of such a facility demonstrates support for evidence-based approaches, even if, at first, they may be challenging or controversial. A strong body of evidence supports the effectiveness of heroin-assisted treatment, showing it can reduce the use of street drugs and increase the likelihood of individuals remaining in treatment.’
The HAT centre set up in Glasgow last December provides two doses of the drug a day. Patients are assessed when they arrive to make sure they are not already under the influence of any substances before they are prescribed heroin by a doctor.
Each user is then supervised while they inject the drug with clean equipment. Dr Saket Priyadarshi, associate medical director at Glasgow Alcohol and Drug Recovery Services, said: ‘Our main case is based on reducing harm to the people most vulnerable to drug deaths and drug-related harm and help them enter the road to recovery. But there are wider benefits for society.’
The HAT centre is funded by the health and social care partnership between NHS
Greater Glasgow and Clyde and Glasgow City Council.
A spokesman for the health board said the scheme had been a success and could soon be introduced elsewhere.
He added: ‘All patients are now in stable accommodation where the majority had been homeless beforehand.
‘All patients have regular access to a GP and to a social worker and none have engaged in activity which would result in them being returned to prison. While we’re still in the pilot phase we hope that, following evaluation, other areas can consider the benefit of this treatment.’
But the scheme has been criticised for feeding addiction.
Dr Ian Oliver, a former Grampian Police chief constable and UN drugs expert, said: ‘The whole obligation on the Scottish Government is to reduce drug use and abuse and although they claim that’s part of the way of soliciting treatment, all it is doing is allowing people to continue their habit.
‘Even if they are getting prescribed heroin, it is a 99 per cent bet they are also using heroin from elsewhere.
‘I doubt that it would achieve what people claim. I’m not aware that this reduces deaths – it may well have done, but it is not reducing drug use.’
As well as HAT, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde has handed out sterile injecting equipment to around 8,000 users this year.
The NHS has also provided almost 500,000 foils as an alternative to needles, allowing users to smoke drugs instead of injecting. The health board also distributed 5,660 Naloxone kits – an injection that can prevent an accidental overdose.
‘Not aware that this reduces deaths’
SCoTLAnd’S drug deaths have hit a record high. Again. In fact, this is the sixth year in a row. It is not only a national scandal, it is our nation’s shame. on Friday, Public Health Minister Joe FitzPatrick was made the sacrificial lamb to take the heat off the First Minister. But however hapless Mr FitzPatrick may have been, sacking a man barely in the job two years doesn’t cover up for repeated failures.
More than 1,200 lives gone this year. Each one a fully formed person born into a family, with hopes and ideas about their future and each one dead before they could fulfil it. It’s not just numbers, it is people.
Fourteen years ago, nicola Sturgeon was outraged by Scotland’s drug death rate. She stood in Holyrood and berated the then First Minister Jack McConnell about waiting times and the reduction of rehab facilities.
So serious was it, she proclaimed, that Scotland needed a change of government to tackle the issue, saying: ‘After eight years of broken promises, do not the communities that live with drug addiction and drug-related crime day in and day out now need a new Government with the drive, energy and commitment to tackle this massive national challenge?’
I wonder what the nicola Sturgeon of then would say to First Minister nicola Sturgeon now?
When drug deaths are double what they were when the SNP came to power. When drug users are dying in Scotland at a rate three-and-a-half times that of other parts of the UK and at the highest rate in Europe.
When waiting times are running to a year or more for treatment and the Scottish Government has cut rehab services to the bone?
Scotland has some world-leading residential rehab facilities.
one, Castle Craig Hospital, in Peeblesshire, has such a reputation that more than 250 patients from the netherlands are sent there every year for treatment.
The NHS used to fund a similar number of places for Scottish patients, now it funds only five. This may be why the netherlands has 16.5 drug deaths per million people compared with Scotland’s 234.
IT IS not just Castle Craig. of Scotland’s residential rehab facilities, only 22 are funded by the Scottish Government. If you are a drug user, you have to get lucky to get this sort of treatment – by being rich enough to pay or fortunate enough to find a charity to pick up the tab.
Scotland’s rehab charities want to get more of Scotland’s most vulnerable patients off drugs for good and they have programmes with a proven success rate.
They are asking for £20 million to replace the money stripped under the SNP’s watch.
For two days after these shocking figures were published, we heard nothing from a First Minister who is watching her countrymen and women die in ever greater numbers each year. Questioned at Holyrood, she admitted the numbers were ‘indefensible’.
But the only action she undertook was to attend a meeting of the drugs taskforce and say she will make a statement to parliament next month.
Rehab services are on their knees because of cuts made by Ms Sturgeon – first as Health Secretary and now as First Minister – and the best she could promise was to go to a meeting.
With three Scots dying every day from drugs, by the time she deigns to come back to parliament with some answers, another 90 Scots could be in the ground.
That is not leadership. Ms Sturgeon once thought that Scotland’s drugs shame was important enough to force a change of government.
now she is the Government – and has presided over a situation that has doubled in severity.
She has no answers, despite the rehab charities having a plan ready to go. What a tragedy.