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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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Scotland: Drugs agencies gang together in fresh street battle
Stephen McGinty The Scotsman
Friday 20 Jul 2001 IN THE war against drugs, Scotland has lost every battle. Scots are taking more illegal drugs than ever before, starting at a younger age, consuming for longer and enjoying a wider selection of chemical stimulants, hallucinogens and depressants. Availability has doubled, the street price has halved and in many areas of Edinburgh and Glasgow you can have heroin, cannabis or cocaine delivered faster than a pizza. The statistics, stripped of the cloak of human interest, are depressingly frank. In Scotland, an average of 300 people die of drug abuse each year, almost three times the rate of Holland, a country with a population three times the size. In Glasgow, where half of all our problem drug users reside, the figure has exploded by almost 80 per cent in the last eight years to 15,368. Drug smugglers are now so successful prices have dropped to within reach of pocket money. Temazepam tablets are as little as pounds1 while ecstasy, cannabis and amphetamines can be bought for a fiver. In police enforcement, the number of offences under the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act was 5,000 in 1988. This has leapt to 29,000 in 1997. A possible bright note is that seizures of controlled drugs in the past decade have increased by more than 350 per cent, from 6,000 to 28,000, a spot that dims considerably as drug workers conclude that seizures have made no difference to supply on the streets. It is official: Scotland, whether we choose to admit it or not, is hip- deep in drugs. Yet, almost a million parents teenagers and children approve - 22.5 per cent of the Scottish population have taken illegal drugs. The dilemma facing the Scottish executive is that the vast majority of illicit drug users are gainfully employed and happy to drift into a heightened state on ecstasy over the weekend, mellow out over a joint or burn up a Friday night on speed or cocaine. They don't register on official statistics because their lives haven't unravelled. The creation of the Scottish parliament has given a new impetus to the fight against drugs, away from those dark days of politicians in baseball caps talking to "da kids". Action in Partnership, the Scottish executive's document, has linked up the country's disparate drug agencies . Critics, however, insist they are turning back towards the past and an adaptation of "Just Say No", where young people are consistently presented with the worst-care scenario, an image regularly shattered by the experience of their friends. Over the next few years a co-ordinated approach will be set up, each school will have effective management for drug misuse, training and education on the dangers . Drugs are to be tackled across four fields: young people are to be better informed; there will be support for communities ; treatment for addicts is to be improved; and availability of drugs is to be reduced. At Scotland Against Drugs, the government's prevention agency, director Alastair Ramsay is asking for time. "We've never been so co-ordinated and we need five years to see if the approach works. If it doesn't, I think Angus McKay [minister for drugs misuse] is a big enough man to say this worked and we will continue it or this didn't work, what else can we try?" Mr Ramsay is strongly opposed to any plans to decriminalise cannabis on the grounds that health risks have been consistently undersold, wider availability would lead to greater use and such a change would wreck the executive's current plans. "We need stability and consistency to see if our approach works," he argued. "All that would change if decriminalisation was introduced. " A review in five years' time would dove-tail nicely with Glasgow University's Centre for Drug Misuse which, this summer, has embarked on a five-year study of the efficacy of a range of treatments of addicts. A large survey of the drug habits of the Scottish population is expected later this year from the centre . No-one is expecting a drop in user rates, more realistic will be a repeat of a chilling sentence from the last study in 1996 that reported: "the upward trend in drug misuse has not yet peaked". For those more closely associated with hard drug users, the discussion over decriminalisation of cannabis is a red herring. Although the Scottish Drugs Forum would welcome the drug's reduction from a Class B to a Class C drug, it would also welcome more greater funding for addiction centres. "We have a lack of rehab centre, detox centres, there is a dreadful lack of services in rural areas and all those who want to get on to methadone cannot do so," said Kathleen Travers, of the SDF. "There is too much talk about the decriminalisation of cannabis. That is not where the problem lies. The problem lies with hard drug users whose lives have spun out of control." A major problem is a lack of drug treatment centres. When a headmaster calls Scotland Against Drugs for advice on how to deal with a 14-year- old girl on heroin, he is referred to the girl's GP. Where the Netherlands offer a one-stop-shop, with centres in every major city and towns offering a range of addiction treatments for alcohol to heroin , Scotland remains a jumbled variety of services, all complaining of under-funding, but saying the executive has made a step in the right direction. "The executive agreed that for too long there was too much money put into enforcement at the expense of treatment. That is being redressed," said Ms Travers. But what should we be doing? When you ask one experienced drugs worker what he would do if the First Minister is impotent over the reserved drugs law, he smiles . "I would instruct a Royal Commission to carry out a review of the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act. "The law was written by the finest legal minds in the country, but at a time when there was a few thousands addicts in Britain. No-one, I repeat, no-one could have imagined a situation when we have over 12,000 hard drug addicts in Glasgow alone. "Legalisation is not an option, but a serious re-assessment of the drug sentencing laws and the approach of the police is." As another drug worker said: "If this is a war, then it's Vietnam."
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