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Plenary, 06 Sep 2007

06 Sep 2007 · S3 · Plenary

Item of business

Drugs Misuse

Pringle, Mike LD Edinburgh South Watch on SPTV

I take Richard Simpson's point and, like others, bow to his knowledge of the area, which is greater than mine.

Trish Godman was absolutely right to make the point that antisocial behaviour is almost always the result of misuse of mainly drink, but also drugs. In Edinburgh, the way forward has been seen through action on alcohol and drugs, a partnership of the key bodies in the city that deal with different aspects of alcohol and drugs misuse. The partnership performs a key role in allocating funding to agencies offering treatment and rehabilitation in the area of drug and alcohol misuse. It is a great scheme that seeks to ensure that there are no gaps or overlaps in the services that people with substance misuse problems receive. Funding of such schemes needs to be increased. For every £1 that is spent on treatment, £3 is saved on enforcement.

Trish Godman pointed out that it costs up to £10,000 to treat someone. She obviously has experience of that. We need to take cognisance of such experience.

I hope that the new SNP Government will spend more money on preventing drugs misuse. It has long been my party's policy that Government should spend to save in many areas of public policy. That needs to be done in this area. The cost to society of drugs misuse is huge. The Scottish Executive—when it was the Scottish Executive—estimated a cost of £330 million in relation to absenteeism, crime and the criminal justice system. If a fraction of that was better channelled towards treatment and rehabilitation, we would be a better society. What will the Government consider doing in that regard?

The previous Executive made a good start in changing our culture of drugs. I welcome the minister's commitment to extend drug treatment and testing orders, particularly for females and children. I disagree with Annabel Goldie, and think that Richard Simpson is right: we do not need more testing in prison—we should be sending fewer people to prison for short-term sentences and should use DTTOs to keep such people out of prison and thereby reduce our prison population. Duncan McNeil was right to say that we need to keep families together as far as possible and to give them help, rather than put the mother or father in prison.

DTTOs have cut reoffending rates: 48 per cent of people given an order have not reoffended within two years. Seventy per cent of cases dealt with by the courts are believed to be drug related. The DTTO method of dealing with drugs misuse is the best way of addressing drug-related criminal behaviour. That has been coupled with the work of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, which seized £70 million worth of drugs in 2005-06.

We have also tackled people who are engaged in trafficking and organised crime, with 43 new finance investigators working to seize the assets of drug dealing. Some of those assets have gone directly to communities—I know that the Royal Mile outside the Parliament is cleaned by a washer truck that was bought using such money.

My colleague Margaret Smith highlighted the need for more residential rehab places. Such rehab is very effective for most people, but at present only one person in 50 is offered a place. If we had spent more money on residential rehab for drug users it could have had a serious impact.

I am pleased that the SNP has addressed the issue, but we still await the details, as we do with so much of its programme for government.

Our amendment highlights the way forward and I urge members to support it.

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Plenary, 06 Sep 2007

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