Drugs Policy

Tommy Sheppard Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)]

Last year in Scotland there were 934 drug-related deaths. Of those, 137 were in Lothian, which covers my constituency. People fear that in 2018 the figure could top 1,000, so they are right to regard this as a crisis that needs to be addressed. The compelling tragedy of those deaths is that most were avoidable. These people did not die because they overdosed; they died because they were using dirty needles or other paraphernalia and they contracted hepatitis C or HIV from other users. They died because the stuff they were taking was either cut with toxic substances or was far more powerful than they expected it to be. In some cases, they died because they had left treatment too early—the orthodoxy is that success is judged by how many people go through treatment rather than by the number of people who are kept in treatment.

I laud the work of agencies and of many sincere individuals on the ground at the frontline. I have spoken to many of them in recent months, and they all tell me that even without changing the law many drug-related deaths are preventable. As Members have said, we could certainly have safe consumption facilities. We could also have heroin-assisted treatment. The reality is that the best way to get somebody off an addiction is first to manage it so that they can regain some control over their lives and begin to make plans. We could also remove the stigma—there are far too many people in our society who react to these deaths by saying, “They’re only junkies; their lives don’t really matter.” We have to say that those people were once valued members of a community and that they could be again, and we need to reach out to them. Finally, we could shift the emphasis on to harm reduction through a massive publicity programme.

I do not have time to say what I wanted to say, so let me just make an appeal to the Minister. There are cross-party concerns about drugs policy, and there is cross-party support for a new initiative from the Home Office to review the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. We deal with no other area of public policy where the principal legislation has remained unchanged for nearly half a century. The problem has got dramatically worse and its character has changed. Far too many people are labouring under the misapprehension that prohibition means control, but it does not. There is no control over what substances come on to our streets, there is no control over how much is available, and there is no control over who is using them. There ought to be, and we have a responsibility as legislators to move forward and achieve that. A review is long overdue, and I implore the Minister at least to be receptive to these appeals.