The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
UK ministers accused of prolonging drugs crisis
Fury as Westminster rules out raft of ideas to cut deaths in Scotland
The UK Government has been accused of prolonging Scotland’s drug death crisis after it officially ruled out declaring a health emergency, decriminalising possession or trialling safe consumption rooms.
A prominent MP has predicted more misery will be heaped on Dundee and other tragedy-stricken communities in the years to come after Conservative ministers flatly rejected more than a dozen recommendations for action.
The decision threatened to reopen a rift with the Scottish Government, as Public Health Minister Joe FitzPatrick accused the Westminster administration of “refusing to take the action that will allow us to save the lives of those who are most at risk”.
Demands for an urgent intervention were made after drug deaths in Scotland soared by 27% to a record 1,187 in 2018.
The as-yet-unpublished figures for 2019 are widely feared to be even worse.
Dundee has found itself at the centre of the storm, having been branded the “drugs death capital of Europe” after overtaking Glasgow, the city which previously had the highest fatality rate, in 2017.
After conducting one of the most extensive inquiries into drugs in Scotland, MPs on the Scottish affairs committee at Westminster published a report in November which recommended a series of radical measures to tackle the problem.
They called on the UK Government to declare a “public health emergency”, start treating drugs as a health issue rather than criminal, decriminalise possession of small amounts and trial the creation of a “safe consumption room”, among other ideas.
In an official response to the report published today, Crime and Policing Minister Kit Malthouse confirmed that the government had rejected all but three of the committee’s 19 recommendations.
Committee chairman Pete Wishart, MP for Perth and North Perthshire, was left frustrated by the decision.
“I very much anticipate that the difficulties we’ve seen in Dundee really won’t be any different next year, the same range of issues are going to emerge,” he said.
“I wish I could say something which would give any sort of comfort about what we should expect, but I’m afraid that is not going to be the case.
“It’s profoundly disappointing and depressing. We spent months on this inquiry and talked to absolutely everybody who has got a stake and interest in the drugs debate in Scotland.
“We spoke to both governments, the police, those with lived experience, those on the front line, and none of it has made any difference at all.
“There was an overwhelming consensus about the ways we need to move forward, and I think the general agreement is that the big levers of policy change that are required need to be pulled now.
“We could do certain things, we could put sticking plasters over it, but until we fundamentally change our approach things aren’t going to get better.”
On the proposal to stop treating possession as a criminal offence, Mr Malthouse said: “The decriminalisation of drug possession in the UK would not eliminate the crime committed by the illicit trade, nor would it address the harms associated with drug dependence and the misery that this can cause to families and communities.”
Calls for a pilot project to test “consumption rooms”, which are professionally supervised healthcare facilities where users can inject, were also dismissed.
“No illegal drug-taking can be assumed to be safe and there is no safe way to take them,” the minister said, while also pointing to legal complications which would require primary legislation to resolve.
Mr Malthouse added: “We reject the recommendation to declare a public health emergency but accept the importance of working across the UK to tackle drug misuse.”
“I wish I could say something which would give any sort of comfort. PETE WISHART MP