WE ARE FIGHTING WITH ONE ARM TIED BEHIND OUR BACK
Public health minister makes plea for UK support to save Scottish lives
BY TORCUIL CRICHTON Westminster Editor THE struggle to tackle Scotland’s drugs death crisis is being fought with “one arm tied behind our back” because of the UK Home Office’s refusal to co-operate on safe consumption rooms for addicts.
Joe FitzPatrick MSP, Holyrood’s minister for public health, made a public plea for the Home Office to reassess its approach to illegal drugs.
Describing the soaring drugs-related deaths in Scotland, expected to exceed 1000 next month, as a health emergency he appealed for a rethink in granting exemptions to the UK-wide drugs laws to allow a planned consumption room in Glasgow to go ahead.
Giving evidence to MPs in the Commons, FitzPatrick said: “It absolutely is an emergency. A thousand people dying a year has to be an emergency. The powers are reserved to the UK Government so I would ask them to respond to that emergency.”
He told members of the Scottish affairs committee: “We are responding with a task force and a drug and alcohol strategy which has a broader health approach but we are fighting with one arm tied behind our backs.
“I call on this committee to help us and persuade the UK Government, rather than fighting against us, to support us in saving lives in Scotland.”
He told MPs that discussions with the Home Office on safe consumption rooms, which are a life-saving feature of drugs policy in other countries, had not got off the starting block. The consumption rooms, allowing users to inject their drugs in a safe, sterile environment, would require changes to the Misuse of Drugs Act, which would decriminalise not just the addicts but health officials who provided the facility. FitzPatrick said: “Irrespective of the human suffering, it seems impossible for the Home Office to view this through a public health lens. Part of the problem is, unusually in the world, that this is viewed by the UK Government as a justice issue
and not a public health issue. Clearly that is having an impact in Scotland.”
FitzPatrick added: “People are dying and there is a policy here and evidence that suggests it would save lives.”
The SNP m inister backed away from making the issue one of more powers for the Scottish Parliament.
He said: “I think there is a strong argument, supported across parties, that being able to take decisions in the Scottish Parliament would be better. However, if I cannot get agreement on that, I would be up for having a conversation with the UK Government about making the changes using legislation at Westminster that would allow us take a proper public health approach to the drug problem in Scotland.”
FitzPatrick admitted that 20 years ago, he would not have been comfortable with a decriminalisation approach to the drugs problem, or to drug consumption rooms but had changed his mind. He said: “I was overly concerned about perception but when you speak to people who have been impacted by drugs, who have lost a loved one, you understand the urgency of having to look at this through a public health lens.”
The Record’s debate on how to tackle Scotland’s spiralling drugs deaths – which led us to back decriminalisation as an approach – was singled out for praise.
Asked by SNP MP Pete Wishart if campaigning journalism had highlighted a fresh approach to the drugs problem, FitzPatrick agreed, replying, “If I can mention the actual paper in question, the Daily Record.”
The Scottish affairs committee investigation into drug misuse has heard evidence from police and drugs specialists that they are ready to move from criminalising addicts to diverting them for health treatment.
MPs have heard calls for the Misuse of Drugs Act to be updated but Home Office ministers have refused to appear before the committee to give evidence on their defence of the act. Lord Advocate James Wolffe dismissed the suggestion he could, as Scotland’s chief law officer, offer a “letter of comfort” leaving users and providers of drug consumption rooms without fear of prosecution.
He told MPs: “For a whole host of practical reasons and constitutional principles, this needs a legislative response and is not something I can appropriately do within the current law. Ultimately, it is a question for policy-makers.”