Police chief critical of drug policy

Punitive drug laws are pushing people towards criminality and harm, one of Scotland’s top police officers has claimed.

Assistant Chief Constable Steve Johnson of Police Scotland likened the way the system handles drug users to a “hamster wheel” and questioned whether prosecution delivers “good social justice”.

Mr Johnson, appearing before the Scottish affairs committee, also revealed drug-related deaths in Scotland almost doubled in three years, from 539 in 2015 to 1,067 in 2018.

He said: “They come through the custody door, they get processed through the criminal justice system, go in through the sheriffs’ courts, they go into prison.

“Of those people who come out, 11% die within

“Pushing people intoaplace where there’s more harm”

the first month of having been released according to the statistics, but police officers get used to this carousel, this sense of hopelessness.”

He welcomed the fact policing had been devolved. Pressed on the Home Office’s drug policy, Mr Johnson said it “feels very punitive” and he saw a “clear tension” between upholding the law as it stands and a police officer’s first duty, to protect life.

He said: “The criminal justice process, I think, is probably deleterious, it’s actually pushing people into a place where there is more harm.”

Professor Alex Stevens, who advises the UK Government on drug policy, said the Home Office’s strategy of “social control and repression” around drug use was “crumbling”.

And Jim Duffy, an exStrathclyde Police officer who now works for Law Enforcement Action Partnership UK, told the committee the war on drugs was “completely lost and unwinnable”.