Who has the answers?
There are moments when the spirit lifts 鈥 and times when the heart sinks. Today鈥檚 publication of drug misuse statistics tends to fall into the latter category.
As the Minister, Fergus Ewing, puts it: 鈥淢ore than 50,000 people in Scotland are fighting a personal battle with drugs.鈥
The Minister promises a new strategy in the New Year, with a 鈥済reater emphasis on prevention鈥 allied to enforcement.
In response, the Conservative leader Annabel Goldie, who has pursued a persistent campaign on the issue of methadone, urges an enhanced use of rehab, linked to zero tolerance for those who profit from drugs.
One can only hope that, singularly or collectively, Scotland鈥檚 politicians can come up with productive ideas.
I cannot say I am optimistic. Perhaps I have simply witnessed too many brave new starts in this field.
But let鈥檚 contribute to the debate here. What would you do? Would you, mostly, tackle demand with education initiatives and rehab? Would you, mostly, tackle supply with law enforcement?
Would you decriminalise certain drugs? Would you decriminalise use 鈥 but not supply?
Would you, as one MSP previously suggested, be inclined to remove young children from the care of drug abusers?
Politicians don鈥檛 have all the answers. For the avoidance of doubt, I don鈥檛 remotely blame them for that. This is a really complex issue. So what would you do?
I'm 
Comments
To begin with, I would decriminalise many types of drugs. Some drugs have little or no harmful effects compared to "legal" drugs like alcohol and that needs to be reflected in law.
As well as lowering prices, decriminalisation means that the drugs themselves are less likely to have been mixed with harmful chemicals. This alone could save lives.
On the other hand, drugs like crack, cocaine, GHB and certain others are probably better being permanently banned...
Of course their should be an emphasis on prevention, but surely the problems drug misuse are predominately associated with poverty and deprivation. Many children and adults who take drugs come from dis-functional families with no responsible "role model" Unless there is some sort of intervention at this level they have very little chance.
The police should also be given more resources(FBI style)to target the semi-ligitimate money men behind the pushers and stop the supply.
Legalise and encourage sensible use of all drugs for adults (21 years +). Anything in moderation is fine - address the issues around addiction and educate accordingly. Anyone supplying children should be punished severely. What's wrong with a little hedonistic pleasure?
I would legalise the sale and use of most drugs, but create a state system for retailing drugs (including tobacco and alcohol) like Systembolaget in Sweden, except that these would be in competition with one another to keep prices at the market rate.
This would enable the Scottish Government to take back control of drugs. Criminal gangs and drug dealers would be priced out of the market, and would no longer be able to sell their dangerously adulterated wares to vulnerable people and cause such misery. Selling tobacco and alcohol through this system would also prevent dodgy off licenses and supermarkets from offering irresponsible deals and selling to those under age.
Those people who do want to buy drugs (including tobacco and alcohol) would be able to buy them legally from the new retailers, but would be advised about the dangers and addictiveness of the substances they wanted to buy. There would also be a centre for rehabilitation advice in each retailer in order to encourage those who no longer wanted to take these substances.
We would probably need to continue giving special licenses to some wine and whiskey shops which sell only high quality products.
Its certainly a difficult problem that reaches into the heart of every scottish community.
I would like to see more rehabilitation centers for the scots who are already having problems managing their drug addiction. However education of the young will not stem the tide of new addicts on its own, and therefore Id advocate 10 years jail time for any drug dealer caught in the act.
Drugs will always be available if there is
1. enough profit to be made.
2. Little risk in dealing.
However increasing the Risk of drug dealing with increased jail terms will probably lead to increases in levels of violence as the dealers will do anything not to get caught.
Like you said difficult multifaceted problem. As we have seen with many years of new drug initiatives, small band-aid initiatives just dont work. We need to see a huge amount of public monies spent if we really want to make a difference, the real question is, As a society do we want to make this a funding priority, or can we really afford to ignore it any longer.
I would legalise the sale and use of most drugs, but create a state system for retailing drugs (including tobacco and alcohol) like Systembolaget in Sweden, except that these would be in competition with one another to keep prices at the market rate.
This would enable the Scottish Government to take back control of drugs. Criminal gangs and drug dealers would be priced out of the market, and would no longer be able to sell their dangerously adulterated wares to vulnerable people and cause such misery. Selling tobacco and alcohol through this system would also prevent dodgy off licenses and supermarkets from offering irresponsible deals and selling to those under age, and encouraging the 'drink til you drop' culture.
Those people who do want to buy drugs (including tobacco and alcohol) would be able to buy them legally from the new retailers, but would be advised about the dangers and addictiveness of the substances they wanted to buy. There would also be a centre for rehabilitation advice in each retailer in order to encourage people to give up and seek help. Tax on drugs, alcohol and tobacco, would be ring fenced for paying for an elaborate system of rehabilitation, pervasive and persistent advertising campaigns, education in schools, and offering young people in sink estates worthwhile things to do.
We would probably need to continue giving special licenses to some wine and whiskey shops which sell only high quality products.
Give all the junkies free smack and anything else they want - decriminalise all drugs - let offenders off all charges - hey its happening already - great country aint it????????????????????????????
There are literally tens of thousands of people who take substances such as speed, Ecstacy and cannabis each weekend in Scotland. Whats more, their 'recreational use' does not cause any significant problems in the vast majority of cases.
The only time we will get sensible about drug use is when those who have never taken anything (and hence don't know what they are talking about) but continue to bleat on about prohibition, quietly sit down and let those with experience of either using or counselling users to take the lead.
Ps. I'm also not talking about the so called 'counsellors!' who occasionally appear in the press for the likes of "Scotland Against Drugs" spewing their biased propaganda for media consumption in order to justify the continuation of funding for their rediculous schemes.
Legalise and control various substances. Government can always undercut all dealers, drugs are safer, more controlled, cleaner and more socially accepted.
Treat serious issues like heroin abuse with effective proven treatments such as ibogaine.
Alternatively, throw unknown amounts at a methadone programme that doesn't work and continue persecuting users of drugs while accepting alcohol related violence as an acceptable societal consequence.
I know what I wouldn't do. I wouldn't start tolerating drug abuse by confiscating personal amounts of Class A drugs and letting the abuser off scot free (as some Scottish Police Forces now appear to be practising in selected areas/events).
To my mind the drug problem stems from the disfunctional family life that is the lot of so many young people today.
For me, the main thing that's wrong and the cause of so much misery is the endless quest for more and more material things has seen children relegated to some kind of less important objects that can be nurtured and brought up by nurseries, child minders, after school clubs, some over and above, have to go into a weekend care. Anybody other than the parents raising the children. How can those parents know how to cope with their wayward or difficult teenagers when they never had to deal with them when they were the puce faced tantrum throwing infant; how or when do they learn the parenting skills, how to set bounderies? One such woman of my acquaintance said of her sulky drunken 15 year old daughter 鈥淪he鈥檚 had everything we could possibly give her. She is so ungrateful. I鈥檝e washed my hands off her.鈥
Successive Governments have downgraded the role of mothers, preferring to make money available for more nursery places rather that paying mothers to stay at home to nurture their own children. We see the results all around us in the breakdown of family life, tired and worn out parents, unhappy ill-disciplined children. The drug problem is merely a sympton of a far greater malaise within society
Parents need to realise that they should be the most important people in their children鈥檚 lives, to be there from the beginning and while they grow up even if it means getting by with much less money. I reckon the benefits would be apparent within a decade. We really do need to get back to valuing the family. It is the best safeguard children can have againsty the ill of an uncertain world.
I'd use the penal system to hammer the suppliers really hard and put much more money into education and rehabilitation.
Almost 50 years ago, when I was 14, we knew that the local Bowling Alley was where you could get Cannabis. Personally I couldn't tell you about price or quantities bought, nor could most of my friends, but we knew where it could be bought.
We did read about police kicking down doors and arresting users but that was our total knowledge of drugs around 1960 and the percentage of teenagers using in my town was tiny.
Now, after 50 years of the so called 'War on Drugs' primary school kids could tell you the price of a variety of drugs and where to get them. How? Because many of them are on drugs. In short, this so called 'War' has been a fiasco, no far worse, it's been a sham, a pretence. Time for that radical solution we all know about but that terrifies all politicians.
How do we rid our streets of drugs? Easy, we supply them to addicts free from Government sponsored clinics.
This saves the current generation from the need to rob houses, mug strangers and even steal from parents and grannies. It brings them into an environment which will get many of them clean and allow the rest to manage their drug habit and live a relatively useful life. (Recreational drugs might need to be handled differently.)
More importantly it will save the next generation from being corrupted by street and school drug dealers because there won't be any drugs around.
The trade would be restricted to newbies who would stop buying as soon as they became addicted. They would then get their supply free from the clinic, (straight into their arm for those injecting.
Drug related crime and street dealers would wither and die on the vine within a few months.
Too radical for you? No problem, let's continue with the 'War on Drugs' which has simply made matters worse in every country in the world for over 50 years.
I say remove control of the drug trade from the dealers. Have as a previous poster suggested a place where drugs are bought and sold under state control. That way you can also hand out information on the effects of drugs including alcohol and tobacco. Drugs are not going to go away they have been around for thousands of years in one form or another. We are never going to win any war against drugs. So it is time instead to renegotiate societies relationship with drugs. We could even tax drugs and use the money from this to treat people who are addicts.
There's a surprising number of comments here apparently advocating the legalisation of various substances as a one-step solution to problems like addiction (#s 1,3,4, probably 8).
EG:
9. At 08:29 PM on 18 Dec 2007, MB wrote:
Legalise and control various substances. Government can always undercut all dealers, drugs are safer, more controlled, cleaner and more socially accepted.
But surely alcohol already meets these conditions, and yet you can hardly say that scotland is without problems caused by addiction to/abuse of that drug.
Let's pay the farmers in Afghanistan a fair price for their poppies and ensure state control over drug production and distribution. That helps to solve some of the big issues in this destroyed middle east country.
Drug addicts that register for treatment should be given legal heroin on a stepped down basis that matches their personalised treatment regime. Enough resources should be put in place to ensure the addicts get the best chance possible to get off drugs. This includes the ancilliary support services required to make them feel better about themselves e.g. finding a worthwhile job or training.
I've never tried drugs but understand those people who enjoy them. As for those who bleat on about the danger of drugs then get steaming drunk on one of the most destructive drugs, I simply say alcohol would be a banned drug today if it was just being discovered/invented. Stop being hypocrites and accept other people may have their own drug of preference and it may not be alcohol.
What we need is informed policy made by the people in the front line, not headlining politicians who don't truly understand or even truly appreciate the damage drugs do to people lives when they become an addiction.
I think this issue, along with alcohol abuse and the revoltingly high level of violence endured in some parts of Scotland are the real issues our politicians should address. You can add to this list the lack of affordable housing, our crumbling educations system, and second-rate public sevices too.
However, look what has occupied them over the last few weeks, issues that are mostly irrelevant to those outside the Holyrood village.
"Big Fez wrote:
There's a surprising number of comments here apparently advocating the legalisation of various substances as a one-step solution to problems like addiction (#s 1,3,4, probably 8).But surely alcohol already meets these conditions, and yet you can hardly say that scotland is without problems caused by addiction to/abuse of that drug."
Alcohol's abuse stems from its price, social conditions and its availability. I probably should have suggested that it's important to give people something to do other than use substances i.e. sport, constructive activity. Having a pub on every corner in Scotland probably contributes-chances of a heroin use centre on every corner? And the chances of there being a cocaine happy hour after work? Alcohol is a drug that fails to enrich the mind, destroys the body and distrupts society through its abuse. But try finding an alternative to going and getting plastered in Scotland and I think we have our true problem.
Incidently, I see methadone treatment now costs 拢12 million a year in Scotland. Well worth it, I'm sure.
Sorry for the late response!
There's an awful lot of sense in the comments above - far more than we'll get from any of the politicians, sadly.
Scotland has a serious problem with drugs. The serious drug problem is primarily alcohol, with nicotine coming a fairly distant second and all the others being also-rans. Yes, heroin has devastating consequences for many people in Scotland, but it pails into insignificance beside our alcohol problem.
In fact, as others have pointed out above, there are two major problems with illegal drugs in Scotland: they're outside the legal marketplace so there's no control of quality or purity, with the result that people may have little idea what substances they're actually ingesting; and the ridiculous harshness of sentencing for dealing in less dangerous drugs means that the criminals can get better profit with no greater risk by dealing in the harder ones.
Legalisation - and with it, rigorous quality control, and reasonable taxation - would drive the organised criminals out of the market, and drive adulterated products out of the supply chain. It might lead to a small increase in usage, or a small drop. It wouldn't solve the problem overnight. But it is at least an approach worth trying (and one we won't hear from our politicians).
But behind that - again as others have said above - is the fact that drug addiction is not a primary problem in itself. It is a symptom of social dislocation, of alienation and anomie. If we could remove every scrap of opiate, every trace of cocaine, every gram of amphetamine, every leaf of canabis - and every drop of alcohol - from the streets of Scotland overnight it would not solve the problem. We need to find something which gives those Scots who now seek to escape from their lives through narcotics something to live for, and banning drugs does not even begin to address that problem.