Government is indifferent to national calamity

Features / 17 December 2020

State intervention has been too little, too late, as a drugs epidemic decimates working-class communities across Scotland, writes NEIL FINDLAY

injecting

Neil Findlay

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ON Monday December 14, on the eve of the publication of the latest and much-delayed Scottish drugs deaths statistics, I hosted a Zoom meeting, along with academics from the University of the West of Scotland.

Ian McPhee and Barry Sheridan have worked on drugs and social policy for many years and know all about the crisis that is causing so much carnage in working-class communities across Scotland.

At that meeting held on a Monday afternoon in December, 300 people joined us — an astonishing number, showing the huge concern there is at Scotland’s national shame as the drugs death capital of the developed world.

Accept that the root of the drugs crisis is poverty, hopelessness and trauma and have a measurable and clear plan of national and local priorities and funding to address this.
Treat people as human beings and develop a plan with them to address their needs and, more importantly, their rights.
Stop the cuts to drugs and alcohol services and fund them to the level we need — at a very minimum replacing the 55 per cent real-terms cut over the last decade.
Create a drugs treatment guarantee for all who seek help, with the right to appropriate treatment written into it and hold government and service providers to account for delivery.
Provide equal access to drugs to treat opiate addiction.
Provide residential rehab for those who need and want it.
Invest in community mental health services to meet stringent service standards and access to services.
Bring police, community and public health funding streams together to deliver practical outcomes to help those in need.
Set up mental health teams staffed by professionals in the field in police stations.
Allow drugs users who have not responded to other forms of treatment to be prescribed heroin in a medical setting.
Extend the training of people in the application of naloxone and, crucially, fund this role out where people are dying.
Establish early warning programmes to alert people of new drugs or risky behaviours on the streets.
Implement governance and accountability processes to ensure that those who are funded and responsible for delivering change are held to account.
Provide drugs testing facilities to reduce harms and deaths and to educate users.
Have a concerted long-term project to address the street benzodiazepine crisis.
Extend the provision of mental health crisis centres like the Penumbra one in Leith which provide emergency crisis accommodation and a safe place of respite for a short period. It’s the only one of its kind in Scotland — we need a network of such places across the country.
Get people off the streets and into accommodation with support — the HIV outbreak in Glasgow is predominantly affecting homeless street drugs users.
Stop discharging people from hospital or prison onto the streets with nowhere to go and no follow-up care.
Stop allowing people to drop out of the treatment system — these are the people that are dying as they are left with no support and no hope.
End the cuts to youth work, housing support, community education, funding for the voluntary sector and social work — these are the services that civilise us as a society.
Provide guaranteed long-term funding to projects we know work like Aid n Abet in Edinburgh working with offenders and young people.
Follow what progressive police and crime commissioners in England and Wales are doing where drugs and alcohol offenders sign a contract to undergo mental health treatment and help is provided to address problematic drugs use.
Set up overdose prevention facilities in our major cities and direct the police not to intervene in their work.
Establish a network of community outreach workers who will go into communities seeking out those to engage them in services.
Have a funded local and national strategy of early intervention.
Support mutual aid groups as one of a suite of treatment options.
Ensure that there is an annual report and debate in Parliament on the publication of drugs deaths statistics.

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