{"id":5594,"date":"2021-08-08T13:32:47","date_gmt":"2021-08-08T12:32:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/weegiefifer.scot\/?p=5594"},"modified":"2021-08-08T13:35:38","modified_gmt":"2021-08-08T12:35:38","slug":"promised-actions-on-drug-deaths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/weegiefifer.scot\/?p=5594","title":{"rendered":"Promised Actions on Drug Deaths"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">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&#8217;t have the powers to decide which policies are best for us.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I was encouraged by Angela Constance&#8217;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:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-background wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"background-color:#fbd5a6;font-size:17px\"><strong>Gillian Mackay<\/strong>: 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-background wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"background-color:#fbd5a6;font-size:17px\"><strong>Angela Constance<\/strong>: This Government is firmly in support of implementation of safe consumption rooms, based 30 years of evidence&#8230;.. <strong>We are committed to implementing those irrespective of the constitutional opportunities or constitutional constraints that we face<\/strong>. Detailed work in government is going on right now&#8230;.. I want to assured that when it comes to implementing evidence-based interactions that will save lives I will leave no stone unturned.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\"><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">You can listen to the whole statement here:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"width:auto\"><div style=\"position:relative;height:0;padding-bottom:56.25%;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.scottishparliament.tv\/meeting\/ministerial-statement-actions-being-taken-to-reduce-drug-deaths-in-scotland-august-3-2021\/embed\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"\" mozallowfullscreen=\"\" webkitallowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scottishparliament.tv\/meeting\/ministerial-statement-actions-being-taken-to-reduce-drug-deaths-in-scotland-august-3-2021\">Full Statement Link on Scottish Parliament TV<\/a> Contains information licensed under the Scottish Parliament Copyright Licence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2021\/apr\/30\/uk-first-drug-consumption-van\">UK&#8217;s first mobile drugs consumption van.<\/a> That is against the law as it currently stands in Scotland because the Home Office in London won&#8217;t give the Scottish Parliament authority for them. Here is the interview with Peter: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-soundcloud wp-block-embed-soundcloud\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Peter Krykant - Independent Holyrood 2021 Candidate by Scottish Independence Podcasts - IndyLive Radio\" width=\"770\" height=\"400\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?visual=true&#038;url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F1025790820&#038;show_artwork=true&#038;maxwidth=770&#038;maxheight=1000&#038;dnt=1&#038;in=indyliveradio%2Fsets%2Fholyrood-2021-candidate\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Peter wasn&#8217;t successful in his bid to become an MSP. He is still campaigning though. And as he says in this tweet, it&#8217;s only the Scottish Tories in Holyrood who are against safe consumption rooms. We need to just do it. I agree. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">With broad agreement across all but Scots Tories in Holyrood to change drug policy Westminster remains committed to a position where prison &amp; punishment is seen as the solution to the UK drug death crisis.<br><br>&#8220;Scotland suffers the most &#8211; we must be brave, we must act now&#8221;<br><br>1339 &#x1f494; <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/wsWVqmN9Cd\">pic.twitter.com\/wsWVqmN9Cd<\/a><\/p>\u2014 Peter Krykant (@PeteKrykant_OPC) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/PeteKrykant_OPC\/status\/1423587764054941696?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 6, 2021<\/a><\/blockquote> <script async=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8217;t have the powers to decide which policies are best for us. I was encouraged by Angela Constance&#8217;s statement to Holyrood last week. And in the questions [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5603,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264,86],"tags":[313,311,314,315,312],"class_list":["post-5594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-holyrood","category-indyref2","tag-angela-constance-msp","tag-drug-deaths","tag-gillian-mackay","tag-holyrood-tv","tag-safe-consumption-rooms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weegiefifer.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weegiefifer.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weegiefifer.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weegiefifer.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weegiefifer.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5594"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/weegiefifer.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5602,"href":"https:\/\/weegiefifer.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5594\/revisions\/5602"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weegiefifer.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weegiefifer.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weegiefifer.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weegiefifer.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}