Decriminalisation of hard drugs in Scotland hasn't stopped people dying FREE TO READ
The Scottish government effectively decriminalised Class A drugs two years ago, so why's it doing so again?
The war on drugs has failed. This has become a truism in contemporary politics, a kind of shibboleth the meaning of which no one bothers to ask any more. It is true in the sense criminal prosecutions have not stopped people taking illegal substances. Just locking people up arguably makes matters worse by placing young people in universities of crime – our prisons. However, its one thing admitting that the war is failing, it’s quite another to hand victory to the enemy: the international drug cartels and local criminals who run the industry.
They are not benign actors. They have zero concern for the victims. The obvious danger of legalising hard drugs - which is what the Scottish government is now proposing - is that it effectively legalises the trade. The government is making it legal to possess and consume hard drugs without proper regulation of the supply. It is laissez faire for the most rapacious and anti social capitalists: the drug barons.
The Scottish government, of course, insists that it will still be a criminal offence to deal in drugs, but it is naive to believe that it is possible to differentiate between possession for personal use and possession for the purposes of supply. Drug pushers don’t stand on street corners with bags of heroin, or crystal meth or benzodiazepines. Drugs are distributed by legions of runners holding small quantities of class A drugs. The Channel 4/Netflix drama Top Boy, which was informed by people who actually know how drugs are distributed in UK housing estates showed this vividly. You legalise possession and you legalise distribution.
Anyway, the Scottish Government has already effectively decriminalised Class A drugs, so it is not clear why they are going through this exercise again. Two years ago the Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain, a government appointee who sits in the cabinet, announced to parliament that there is to be a “presumption against prosecution” for possession of hard drugs for personal use. The Police are now expected merely to give warnings to people caught in possession. This has led to some bizarre anomalies. During the pandemic you could be fined for not wearing a mask but not for possession of crack cocaine.
Did the Scottish Government think that this initial decriminalisation would help cut the numbers of deaths? Presumably they did. The argument in 2021 was that by halting prosecutions there would be no reason for users to fear that they might be identified and arrested if they went to their GP or to a drug charity admitting that they consume hard drugs. This was the drugs-as-health policy being implemented. There was actually nothing to stop the Scottish government after 2021 setting up drug treatment rooms and it is not clear why ministers did not continue with plans for a pilot of “shooting galleries” as they are colloquially known. The claim now is that UK drug law has tied their hands.
The awkward fact however is that decriminalisation of hard drugs in 2021 did not work. There was no significant reduction in the numbers of people dying through use and abuse of drugs in Scotland. Two years on, Scotland’s figures are still three and a half times the rate in England, where of course, there has been no decriminalisation and drugs remain illegal for personal use. Scotland remains the drug death capital of Europe.
Which brings us to the central contradiction in the Scottish government's new rhetoric. The drugs minister, Elena Whitham, accuses the UK government of standing idly by while Scots die by blocking the Scottish government's liberalisation policies. But where is the evidence that the decriminalisation makes any difference? Rates of drug deaths are very much lower in England where possession is still illegal. Ms Whitham merely asserts that decriminalisation works without explaining why.
Contrary to what the Scottish government claims, drug charities and experts on dependency do not universally believe that legalisation, on its own, is the answer. The much cited case of Portugal, where drug-related HIV deaths were massively reduced after 2001, is not simply a case of legalise and forget. Anne MarieWard of Faces and Voices of Recovery explained on BBC Radio that the Portuguese regime is based on abstinence, comprehensive rehabilitation and social integration programme which she claims are lacking in Scotland.
So why does the Scottish government focus exclusively on removing penalties for possession? Why is it reintroducing a policy that has already been in place for two years? Well, one suspects that it is partly because there is always a constitutional dimension to SNP policies. The Scottish government is always testing fault lines in devolution: pushing the boundaries in areas like gender reform, waste recycling and drug policy. In the 1998 Scotland Act, drugs were expressly excluded from the powers of the Scottish Parliament. That has always rankled. But turning this into a fight with Westminster is not going to help people whose lives have been blighted by this scourge of modern life.
The Scottish Government is forever talking about “sending a message”, on hate crime, sex offences, misogyny and racism. They use legislation to pursue their moral agenda. But have they asked themselves what message they are sending to housing estates infested with drugs and drug gangs? What message are they sending to parents trying to keep their children from ruining their lives. Imagine a mother or father trying to stop their son or daughter from shooting up in the family home or staggering home out of their minds on benzos. “Cool it ma – it’s legal now. Just like you and dad having a drink. Get aff mah back”.
Middle Class parents in quiet suburbs may regard drugs as a recreational activity, but they have no idea how more deprived communities in Scotland are being destroyed by the drug gangs. In the estates, war against drugs is certainly not over, and the casualties are mounting day by day. That is the problem with the weasel word “decriminalisation”. It is a cop out policy which places users in the hands of murderous criminals.
Governments are inviting people to keep consuming these hugely dangerous substances without regulation of the quality of the drugs or the means of distribution. Instead of decriminalisation governments should perhaps be putting their money where their mouths are and start thinking about real legalisation – taking the drugs out of the hands of criminal gangs and placing distribution in the hands of licensed drug companies. I doubt if this would save many lives, but it would stop housing estates becoming war zones and allow users to be tracked and traced by teams of drug outreach workers.
The present confused policy of decriminalisation is both morally disingenuous and counter productive. County lines gangs are being given a free pass to take over the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people in Scotland free from any plausible risk of prosecution. These are like chemical weapons destroying working class communities - and in this war there can be no armistice.
You put your finger on the problem Iain. There is little point in decriminalising possession without controlling and licensing supply. The latter is the way to take the system out of the hands of organised crime. Many of us have been making this argument to no avail, in my case and that of like minded public health specialists for forty years.
I’d like to add three points.
First, it is still the case that heroin users die from infection through sharing gear, or overdose, usually because they are unaware of the strength of the drug they are injecting. The former can be managed through education and the supply of syringes and needles. The latter by drug testing and legalisation.
Second, the “war on drugs” has been lost. All you need to do is check the purity of street heroin, and the price of a bag, to see that supplies are effectively limitless (purity higher plus price lower equals more stuff on the streets)
Third, a point that was raised by my friends Donald Cameron and Iain Jones in an article in the Journal of Addiction in the early 80s, why are we no further forward in identifying the reasons why young people resort to the use of “drugs of solace”, and and likewise unable to change behaviour.
The policy makes no sense - in fact it could end up exacerbating the problem - unless it is backed up by major and meaningful support for users trying to come off.