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Plenary, 06 Sep 2007

06 Sep 2007 · S3 · Plenary

Item of business

Drugs Misuse

Grahame, Christine SNP South of Scotland Watch on SPTV

I will endeavour not to repeat statistics that have already been cited in the debate, but perhaps I can begin by highlighting a few other figures. Although I fully agree with Margaret Curran's response to Brian Adam's intervention that there is a high incidence of drug abuse in the pockets of deprivation in Glasgow, I should point out that, according to last year's drugs misuse statistics for Scotland, the trend with regard to new referrals is also increasing in rural areas. In 2001-02, 118 referrals were made in the Borders, whereas, last year, there were 219. I believe that the figures are worst of all in Tayside, where, in 2001-02, 346 referrals were made while, in 2005-06, there were 902. Perhaps that trend suggests that dealers are simply moving out to fresh fields.

I welcome the tone of the debate and the view that it is the duty of the Parliament, including both ministers and committees, to try to deal with this major issue, which is a tough one. If it were not, somebody would have solved it somewhere and we could just pick up a map and follow the solution.

Another unfortunate statistic, to which someone may have referred earlier, is that, according to Professor McKeganey, there are currently 50,000 heroin addicts in Scotland and 22,000 on methadone. All their families and communities are also affected by this dreadful plague.

After eight years of this young Parliament, we have increased drug addiction, increased alcohol abuse and an increased prison population, which relates both to acquisitive crimes and to crimes of violence—the former are more often related to drugs and the latter are more often related to alcohol. Unfortunately, there is also the ever-increasing spiral of teenage drinking. This morning's Herald has the headline "Teenage drinking spirals into drug abuse and crime".

Many years ago, when I was on the Justice 1 Committee, we visited Barlinnie prison. A medical officer there made it plain that, in his view, the gateway into drug addiction is alcohol. Sadly, that point is now reflected in the report in The Herald.

This is obvious stuff and there are short-term and long-term solutions. On the former, I welcome the attitude to the failure of custodial sentences because, as we know, short-term sentences do not give prison officers an opportunity to get into the rehabilitation of prisoners. There is no joined-up progression from rehabilitation in prison to life outside it. The drug dealers used to wait at the prison gates and sometimes threw the drugs over the prison walls to the prisoners. There was a cycle of drug abuse that just brought people back into prison.

The public quite rightly expect people who steal and who are violent to be punished, and they expect to be protected from such people, but there must also be a role for rehabilitation. The protection and the punishment are only short term if someone offends again after a short-term sentence and then receives a further short-term sentence. That view is sometimes a hard one to sell; it appears that we are being soft on certain people, when in fact we are trying to be hard in a way that helps the individual and society.

I commend the work of the drugs courts, which I have seen in operation. However, their work is very intensive and involves a lot of sheriff manpower. For a drug and/or alcohol abuser, it is often one step forward, two steps back. The drugs courts service must therefore have a high level of commitment, but that is dependent on available funding and manpower.

The issue of education on drug abuse is difficult. What we do does not work. Advertising campaigns about drug addiction tend to be just short term; at the time, they look as if they will work and they might indeed have some impact. Some public health advertising campaigns in other areas have worked. For example, campaigns about violence against women have had an impact. However, the message on drug addiction is obviously not getting through to our young people, who think that they are immortal.

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Plenary, 06 Sep 2007

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