Resentment at drugs policy

Newspapers report that Scotland has the worst rate of drug related deaths in Britain as if it is Holyrood’s fault. But addictive drug management is entirely reserved to Westminster.

Only recently has Scotland been allowed to set up one “safe drug room” where addicts can get clean needles and trained help is on hand as well as counselling.

Were Scotland selfgoverning, Holyrood could do so much more. A dedicated drug squad to find and arrest drug importers and dealers and prevent drugs being imported to Scotland, counselling and safe rooms for addicts, education of the young about the dangers of drug addiction and how not to become addicted.

We’ve largely stopped smoking, why are we not allowed by Westminster to do the same for drugs?

I might never have felt strongly about gaining our Independence to do so but I knew a teenager who became hooked on heroin to the horror and despair of his parents. He was an intelligent chap and eventually decided that he must find help to get rid of this habit and chose to join a group, managed by exaddicts, who supported him through the misery of “going cold turkey”.

About six months later he came home, the same bright young boy that he had been before he got hooked. His parents were delighted. He was looking forward to catching up on education so he could go to university, until his old mates whisked him off for an evening out which ended as it always had, injecting heroin.

He took the amount he had been used to and very soon was in deep trouble. No antidote was available and eventually they phoned for an ambulance, but they left it too late.

It broke his parents’ hearts. It left me with a lingering resentment at being ruled by an uncaring government at Westminster. Independence is the only answer.

Elizabeth Buchan-Hepburn, Edinburgh