Scotland: Where our Government and our NHS has the responsibility for carrying out policies to reduce drug deaths and to help alleviate drug addiction generally. But where they don’t have the powers to decide which policies are best for us.
I was encouraged by Angela Constance’s statement to Holyrood last week. And in the questions to her after the statement, Scottish Green MSP, Gillian Mackay, asked the question I most wanted to hear:
Gillian Mackay: Can the Cabinet Secretary provide an update on what progress has been made on establishing safe consumption rooms as part of wider harm reduction strategy and treatment options.
Angela Constance: This Government is firmly in support of implementation of safe consumption rooms, based 30 years of evidence….. We are committed to implementing those irrespective of the constitutional opportunities or constitutional constraints that we face. Detailed work in government is going on right now….. I want to assured that when it comes to implementing evidence-based interactions that will save lives I will leave no stone unturned.
You can listen to the whole statement here:
Full Statement Link on Scottish Parliament TV Contains information licensed under the Scottish Parliament Copyright Licence.
A few months back I took part in an interview with Peter Krykant for IndyLive Radio. Peter is a drug campaigner. At the time he was standing for Holyrood as an Independent candidate. He told us about his own attempts to run the UK’s first mobile drugs consumption van. That is against the law as it currently stands in Scotland because the Home Office in London won’t give the Scottish Parliament authority for them. Here is the interview with Peter:
Peter wasn’t successful in his bid to become an MSP. He is still campaigning though. And as he says in this tweet, it’s only the Scottish Tories in Holyrood who are against safe consumption rooms. We need to just do it. I agree.
With broad agreement across all but Scots Tories in Holyrood to change drug policy Westminster remains committed to a position where prison & punishment is seen as the solution to the UK drug death crisis.
— Peter Krykant (@PeteKrykant_OPC) August 6, 2021
“Scotland suffers the most – we must be brave, we must act now”
1339 💔 pic.twitter.com/wsWVqmN9Cd
Add comment