Many words have already been written or spoken regarding the most recent announcement that in 2019 1,264 people died as a result of problematic drug use. The ‘Drug-related deaths in Scotland in 2019’ report contains all the cold and analytical figures and it goes into great detail in the 88 page report to inform about drug types, usage and age groups. But when the range of drugs is so large and when polydrug use is so widespread I wonder just how significant the actual drugs are and if we are coming to this problem from the wrong angle.

In society we use drugs all the time. They vary in strength and in social acceptance. If you sit down at night and reach for a glass of wine or beer then you are using alcohol as your drug of choice. You probably don’t rationalise your consumption. You consume it and you enjoy it because it changes the chemistry of your brain in a way that you find acceptable. If you can consistently choose not to lift that drink then you don’t have a problem. Only 10% of drug users ( and I include alcohol as a drug ) can be defined as problem users. But there are many reasons why we use drugs and many reasons why some people form addictions. I should say now that I consume alcohol. Probably less now than I ever have and I have never considered myself a heavy drinker. And I have taken heroin. And it was amazing. I used it to address an issue I had at the time. An issue so great that I knew that taking heroin would lift me out of that situation and relieve my pain. And it did. I was passing a kidney stone and the pain was excruciating and my heroin was medical grade morphine and I accept that there are differences but none that mattered to me at that time. Of the 10% of problematic drug users, the majority are self medicating against pain. Pain experienced through physical, psychological or sexual abuse. Pain that has seeped into their consciousness from years of poverty and disappointment. Pain from a constant gnawing fear of a life unfulfilled. And that is much harder to resolve than my kidney stone because that doesn’t recur everyday and night. Whether the drug is Morphine, Heroin, Oxycodone, Hydrocodone, Fentanyl, Methadone, Buprenorphine, Cocaine or Gin and Tonic with ice and lemon the pain will return unless the causes are addressed. And I fundamentally believe that is what the Scottish government is trying to do, otherwise we will be on a never ending roller coaster of peaks and troughs. Where they can they are fighting poverty through mitigating the third bedroom tax, provided free prescriptions, free meals for school kids, expanded early learning and childcare, provided free personal care for the elderly, free concessionary travel, no fees for higher education, a fairer social security system, introduced the Scottish child payment and the baby box. They are also spending up to £95.3 million this year to tackle problem alcohol and drug use while investing £900,000 to to fund a new programme to improve the response to drug and alcohol use amongst the homeless population. And we now have Scotland’s first heroin assisted treatment service, located in Glasgow.

The First Minister made it very clear that she acknowledges changes must be made and bravely accepted criticism that many a politician would have run from. Changes have already started with the appointment of Angela Constance as the minister for drugs policy. And she has said “ I’m determined to focus on what works to save lives, to work across parliament and with those on the frontline but most of all to work with and listen to those whose lives have been been devastated by drugs.”

There are ways in which we can help those who are already in pain and the two most obvious could and should be green lighted straight away. Naloxone saves lives. It doesn’t cure addiction but it keeps people alive so they have the opportunity to seek out a better life. I know this is being looked at and pilot projects will run in Dundee, Falkirk and Glasgow East starting next February but we have been talking for a long time and I while I am impatient, people are dying. And Drug Consumption Rooms (DCR) have been tried and tested in many countries. Nobody ever died of an overdose in a DCR and they provide an environment where people can engage with housing and welfare specialists. One version of the Hippocratic oath states “I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug”. I would expand that sentiment to politicians too. Because we keep talking and people keep dying.

The appalling number of drug related deaths released today (1,264) are a damning indictment of drug policies that have failed to address the problem for decades. These numbers are not because of an ageing cohort of drug users, they are not because of injecting cocaine, they are not because of new drugs or new mixes of drugs. The root problem is a drug policy born out of ignorance and bigotry that has been allowed to dictate policy and influence mindsets since 1971. A drugs policy imported from the USA and of which John Ehrlichman, President Richard Nixon’s former domestic policy advisor said “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalising both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course, we did.” And we have been fighting a losing battle based on that lie ever since and “vilifying them night after night”. 

Despite the numerous organisations than can intervene, provide support, guidance and care for those in need we have not changed the mainstream view that those people who are dying from drugs are no more than junkies, crackheads and stoners. It’s far easier to isolate people that have been marginalised and stigmatised than it is to listen and understand.  

I could blame Westminster all day long because that’s where the policy sits but that would be to ignore our own ability to be visionary and to be brave. We can’t keep talking while people are dying. We need to take responsibility and we need to take action to save lives and protect vulnerable people that will never be saved by the criminal justice system. We need to acknowledge the fact that the majority of people dying come from poor backgrounds. In a year when over seven times as many people died from drugs than died in the car crashes why are we not angrier. Maybe it’s easier to associate with those who died by car because we recognise that, they could be us. While the idea that we could be drug injecting users dying in rat infested allies is more removed and possibly unthinkable. And so, it becomes somebody else’s problem. But the reality is it somebody else’s friend, family member or loved one. Turning our back on the most deprived and disadvantaged individuals and failing to understand what the problem is serves nobody well. Because the problem is not the drug use. The problems are the reasons behind why so many people are self-medicating. And until we address poverty, class division, mental health, isolation and trauma we shall continue to misdiagnose the situation and people will continue to keep dying. We need a policy that recognises that only 10% of users are problematic. It’s time to legalise and regulate drugs. Take the power away from gangsters and criminals. There are working models in other countries across the globe and while it is the same drugs that are being used in those countries they result in far fewer deaths. Scotland should lead by example and create a humane drug policy that isn’t embedded in ignorance but is full of compassion and understanding. I acknowledge that the Scottish government is restricted in what it can do but we should be designing the policy we want and then seeking out solutions. Who knows where we will be a year from now. Let’s start today and prepare for a better country.  

Ronnie Cowan MP

Vice-chair of All-party parliamentary group on drug policy reform