Drug Misuse in North-East Scotland
The final item of business is a members' business debate on motion S1M-3051, in the name of Richard Lochhead, on drug misuse in north-east Scotland.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament notes with concern that drug misuse in the north east of Scotland has increased dramatically in recent years, with an estimated 50% rise in problem drug users in Grampian alone between 1997 and 2000; further notes that Dundee has the second highest and Aberdeen the third highest level of drug misuse in Scotland and that Grampian has the highest percentage of injecting drug users in Scotland, and considers that the Scottish Executive should recognise the scale of the problem and investigate the level and nature of resources that have been applied to addressing this growing social problem in the north east region, paying particular attention to (a) the role and accountability of the various agencies involved, (b) the amount of resources dedicated to drug users, (c) the cost to society in terms of loss of life, associated health problems and distress caused to users' families and (d) the enormous amount of drug-related crime inflicted on the local community, reflected by the fact that 80% of inmates at HM Prison Aberdeen test positive for drug use at reception.
I begin by thanking all those, from a number of the parties, who signed my motion.
In this day and age, it is utterly appalling that, despite the technology and wealth that we all take for granted, many of our communities lack one basic right that we all expect: the right to feel safe. Hundreds of thousands of people throughout the nation do not feel safe in their communities.
I will tell the minister about Aberdeen, because we are meeting in that great city. It is a city in which a buddying system has been started in recent weeks to protect elderly people who are on their way home after collecting their pensions. It is a city in which many newsagents have packed in their jobs because they are fed up with being assaulted and robbed, and it is a city in which shop staff now lock shop doors during quiet periods because it makes them feel safer. I know a woman in this city who will not leave her home because her house has been broken into three times in less than a year. It is a city in which the incidence of violence and aggression against local national health service staff has gone through the roof. In many high-rise flats in the city, the elderly will not leave their homes after 6 pm. Aberdeen has more than double the national average number of house break-ins—the highest in the country—and still has the second highest overall crime rate in Scotland.
The common theme behind all those problems is drug misuse. Drug-related crime and drug misuse are eating away at our communities. Substance misuse is the biggest social problem facing the north-east of Scotland: 80 per cent of all local crime in the north-east is drug related. Indeed, 80 per cent of inmates test positive for drug misuse on reception at HM Prison Aberdeen at Craiginches. In fact, we might as well turn Craiginches into a secure rehabilitation unit. If we did, we would make much more progress.
Almost every family in the north-east has felt the impact of drug misuse. Either they have a family member who has a drug problem or they know someone who has. Perhaps they have been victims of drug-related crime or they know someone who has. We are aware only of drug misusers who contact our local agencies, so we do not know the true scale of the problem. Local users live in urban and rural communities throughout the region. They come from low-income and wealthy backgrounds.
The police are doing a marvellous job of trying to stop drugs from getting into the north-east. Thanks to intelligent policing, they have seized record levels of illegal drugs in recent months. However, they know that, as long as demand exists, drugs will make their way into our cities and rural communities. They also know that their job is not made easier by the reduction in HM Customs and Excise cover that has left our coasts exposed to drug smuggling. The Peterhead, Montrose and Dundee customs offices have all lost staff in recent years. I ask the minister to take up that issue with his Westminster counterpart.
However, although every kilogram of heroin that is seized and the locking up of drug dealers might help, most of us agree that the solution lies in reducing demand. Drug addiction is an illness and therefore requires treatment. It is worth noting that it is much cheaper to treat addicts than it is to lock them up, but the real benefits of treatment are that we can help addicts to lead drug-free lives and that we often end criminal lifestyles. Surely, given that one addict can commit hundreds of crimes in a year, we should place much more emphasis on treatment services than we do.
We should also bring our justice system and other services closer together, as we discussed in a previous debate today. Drug testing and treatment orders are in place in Aberdeen, but we also need a drugs court in the north-east of Scotland. Glasgow has one and Fife has one; now, it is the north-east's turn.
It is appalling that, despite Aberdeen having one of the highest rates of drug misuse in Scotland and the highest rate of drug-related crime in the country, we come next to the bottom of the league on drug treatment funding. As a result, local services struggle to cope with demand. Members will understand my frustration when a constituent whose son decided that he wanted help to get off drugs approached me. His local general practitioner referred him to Grampian's drug problem service last May, but he is still waiting for an appointment 12 months later. Even when young people want to get off drugs, the system cannot deliver. If someone wants help in Grampian, they must wait for two months if they are a high-risk case, and up to 16 months if they are deemed to be a low-risk case—in other words, if they are over 16, not pregnant and not injecting.
I request that the Deputy Minister for Justice order an immediate inquiry into the drug funding formula and its impact on north-east Scotland. The Arbuthnott formula already leaves Grampian short-changed in general NHS funding, and it is wholly unacceptable that an Arbuthnott-related formula is used for ring-fenced drugs funding.
The police will confirm that Grampian is targeted by drug dealers from Liverpool and the west midlands. That, combined with other factors that I have mentioned, illustrates the need that exists, but we do not have a needs-based funding formula. More funding for Grampian will save lives, cut crime and help our communities. There is also a problem in Tayside where, I hear, the increase in resources has not matched demand.
We must consider how the cash is spent and we must question the accountability of the responsible agencies. The plethora of agencies that is involved is mind-boggling. It is a nightmare to try and tell who is in charge of tackling drug misuse in Grampian—or indeed anywhere else in Scotland. It might be that different agencies have a role to play, and that there is no one solution to this complex issue, but if we are spending millions of pounds while the problem is getting worse, surely the minister should be holding someone somewhere accountable. I ask the minister to investigate the role of each public agency involved. I ask him to turn his specific attention to the drug action teams. They have rotating chairmanships, which makes it difficult to know who leads them. No one seems to hold those bodies to account or to monitor their activity. We need local and identifiable leadership in tackling drug misuse, but I do not believe that people in this region are getting that.
The member is obviously making a specific point about a drug action team in the north-east. In certain areas, such as Glasgow and Fife, DATs work well. Does the member agree that we need to bring those that do not work so well up to the level of the best?
I accept that point. I am not specifically criticising local DATs; I am saying that they need to have identifiable leaders, whom the public and the Government can hold accountable.
Society must address the root causes of drug misuse. Tackling poverty and inequalities must be high on our agenda. When I speak to community representatives, however, the reason that is given for drug-related problems is the lack of options for young people. In many communities, the only option for them is the local high street, which they just walk up and down to pass the time. Surely more national lottery cash should be used for providing affordable sports and leisure facilities in communities throughout Scotland, which would cut substance misuse while making people healthier, which is one of our other priorities.
In speaking about drug misuse, we cannot forget about alcohol. In so many ways, alcohol is just as great a problem for society as are drugs, both in Grampian and throughout the country. We are losing the battle against both and, if we are to make progress, the Parliament and the Government must be prepared to take tough decisions in the coming months and years. I do not have time to go into all the possibilities, and a debate south of the border has already opened some avenues that might be worth exploring.
I believe firmly that one way forward would be the creation of a Scottish standing commission on substance misuse. We need a rolling analysis and appraisal of drugs policy in this country, which would help us to respond to this constantly evolving issue. That should be paralleled by a parliamentary cross-party group on substance misuse, which I know the Deputy Minister for Justice—in his previous life as a lowly back bencher—supported.
Tackling substance misuse is one of the biggest challenges that face our new Parliament and I urge the minister, whose track record illustrates that he cares deeply about the matter, to rise to the challenge and help save communities and save lives. The public do not want soundbites, they do not want endless research initiatives and they do not want posturing—they want leadership from the Parliament and they want it to do whatever it takes to make them feel safe again. They do not want a repeat of the situation in Grampian last year, when 41 people died from drugs.
Our drugs policy is failing Scotland and tough decisions need to be taken sooner rather than later. I therefore urge the minister to respond positively to the drugs crisis in the north-east of Scotland.
Nine members have asked to speak. I remind members that the debate is specific to north-east Scotland, although I will allow references to other areas when those references have some bearing on issues in this part of Scotland. I call for speeches of about three minutes, plus time for interventions.
I thank Richard Lochhead for securing the debate. Drug abuse is undoubtedly an extremely serious issue, which affects many of us either directly or indirectly through increased crime, but we should recognise where there is success. There has been a substantial reduction in housebreaking here in Aberdeen as a result of intelligent policing.
Drug abuse is serious. I recently met a constituent who conveyed to me some of the real human costs of drug addiction. She was left to bring up her grandchildren, because both her daughters were heavily involved in drug abuse. Great pressure is put on grandparents who are left to raise another family while they try to support their children who are involved in drug abuse. Quite often the grandchildren are damaged and need a lot of support.
I was very pleased when the planned £100 million to tackle drug abuse in Scotland was announced. That unprecedented package of sustained investment in tackling drug abuse will help us to break the cycle of drugs and offending.
Will the member give way?
I have just got into my speech, so if Brian Adam does not mind, I will continue.
Is this a debate?
Order. It is up to the member whether she wants to take an intervention.
Yes, it is up to me.
Aberdeen has had substantial funding from that package, including more than £0.5 million for treatment, £860,000 for rehabilitation, £1.2 million for community disposals and more than £0.5 million to help support young people and families. There is substantial investment in putting in place the sort of services that we need in order to tackle drug abuse. However, that is not to say that we do not need to continue putting money into the problem. We need to ensure that funds go where they are needed most, and no one would dispute that Aberdeen has a serious drugs problem.
I was pleased to discuss with the minister recently whether the number of drug users in an area should be considered when the Executive allocates funding. I would like the minister to reassure me that the Executive will consider that.
We are seeing changes in Aberdeen. Phoenix House is opening up new community rehabilitation projects and it provides high-quality user-responsive services, in partnership with the local drug action team. I also heard recently that the Alexander clinic will provide residential detoxification and rehabilitation for people in the north-east of Scotland.
Those are some matters in which progress is being made in the north-east. Aberdeen is leading the way with a single integrated drugs service, which is aimed at introducing closer working arrangements between the different drugs services. Drug testing and treatment orders have also been introduced in the city and now that they have bedded down, I look forward to Aberdeen getting Scotland's third drugs court; I hope that the minister will consider that. More must be done, but services to tackle drug abuse are being rolled out in Aberdeen.
The debate is very important for the north-east. The subject has been talked about for a long time, but there has not been dedicated action on all fronts on the topic.
When I was a practising pharmacist, I dealt a lot with drug misusers and was involved in all sorts of clinics and programmes. I tell members as a professional—I know that Richard Simpson would agree—that it is hugely frustrating when we manage to bring a person who is using drugs down as far as the last step, which is often missing, at which point they must have their hands held and be provided with an environment in which they have a chance to recover.
Many good attempts have been made in Scotland to tackle the problem, but they have been a bit hit or miss. The final step involves a proper approach to rehabilitation, however it is defined and regardless of whether it is provided by the different agencies and charities that have been mentioned in the debate. We must ensure that the journey of coming off drugs has a sustainable end-point. When people come off drugs and reoffend, they are in a weak position and might get tempted back to drugs. The dealers on the streets know that well.
We have heard talk about Peterhead, Fraserburgh and Aberdeen city many times in the past couple of years, but drug abuse does not affect only the larger communities; the problem goes right through to the villages, playgrounds and youth clubs of rural Aberdeenshire.
Richard Lochhead was right to point out that children and young people are in danger if they are not given choices in their social lives. Some of them have a high disposable income, but what do they spend their money on? They can go to bingo or to the cinema only so often, so they tend to choose the pub or drugs. We must break that cycle, which will involve all the agencies, in particular the local councils.
There is no one way to approach the problem. We must use every means available to attack drug misuse. Rescheduling drugs in the belief that that will change the numbers is nonsense. That merely increases acceptance of the use of certain drugs. Let us not mess about—all drugs are a danger to the individuals who take them. We must examine co-ordinated drug policies. The DATs are doing a good job, despite the fact that they are not well supported. We need decent maintenance programmes to get people to a stable point at which they can be helped. That can be done in the community.
We need education at all levels, beginning in the home. We must not leave education until children go to school, where drugs can be viewed as not being the parents' problem. We need proper enforcement and those who must carry that out—HM Customs and Excise and the police—must have appropriate resources. We must address rehabilitation sensibly and we must consider family support. Funding has been mentioned, but it is not the only issue. Societal attitudes and the attitudes of those who are responsible for doing the best for the people of Scotland are important.
I congratulate Richard Lochhead on bringing drug misuse to the chamber's attention. It is a serious problem that will affect future generations. If the Parliament does anything, it must do it for our future generations.
I am disappointed that Elaine Thomson has left the chamber and that she did not take any interventions during her speech. I was pleased that she made representations to the minister about the number of people who are affected by drugs in the north-east. It is a cross-cutting issue and the Executive has treated it as such by setting aside a particular sum for the problem. That money should be allocated on a needs basis, although that is not being done. Richard Lochhead made a plea for money to be allocated on the basis of needs; I hope that other members will echo that plea.
The debate is not just about whether we will have a drugs court to try to deal with those who are involved in criminal activities because of their drug habits. If we want a drugs court in Aberdeen—many of us do—we will need a full range of services so that we can make use of the court. When a sheriff makes a disposal, he must be able to send people to a local residential detox, rehab and throughcare centre. There is no such centre in the public sector. Only after four years of trying has the Alexander clinic in Oldmeldrum finally been registered. There is something wrong with a system in which it takes four years to get registered. We do not have the proper range of services.
Richard Lochhead was right to suggest that Aberdeen's drug action team is perhaps a little short on action and rather long on strategy. The DAT has not encouraged sufficiently well or quickly the development of voluntary and community services to address the problems. There is not just one drug problem—there are many drug problems and there are many ways in which to tackle them.
Does Brian Adam agree that Forth Valley is a good example? There is a community representative on the substance abuse action team, which is proving very useful.
I would be delighted to see greater involvement of community representatives. I know that there are already representatives from the voluntary sector—I believe that there is someone from Aberdeen Cyrenians—on the Aberdeen DAT. I would welcome greater community involvement, because communities suffer. The community can often offer help, support and some of the solutions.
I wish to see the Executive make use of the substantial sum that is available to direct local health and local authority services to provide the residential detox and rehab throughcare centre that is greatly needed. The Executive must encourage the services that are provided by the public sector to make use of the facility that is available in the north-east. That will not be adequate to deal with all the problems in the north-east, but I look to the minister to take steps to encourage a little more involvement.
The most dramatic part of the Social Inclusion, Housing and Voluntary Sector Committee's inquiry into drug misuse in deprived communities is between pages 42 and 47 of the report, and I refer members to those pages. Maps of Scotland and the regions of Scotland are used to show comparisons of general acute hospital admissions for drug misuse in Scotland in 1990 and 1999. Those maps show how drug misuse has spread to every part of Scotland and how it has increased dramatically in the north-east, as it has done in Fife, which I represent.
No one denies the particular character of drug misuse in the north-east, particularly in Fraserburgh—or the Broch. When I stood for Parliament there in 1974, alcohol was the main problem in the area. It has been targeted by drug dealers because of the amount of money that the fishermen earn. There are now 450 heroin addicts in Fraserburgh—that is 2 per cent of the population.
I congratulate Mr Lochhead on securing the debate. He was right to emphasise the importance of waiting times for referrals and for getting on the methadone programme. Anyone who knows anything about addiction knows that it is crucial to catch addicts when they have reached rock bottom, when they have had enough and they want to get into recovery. They have to be got into treatment at that stage. If that moment is missed, the addict is likely to relapse and get back into the cycle of addiction.
I pay tribute to the general practitioners and pharmacists throughout Scotland and the work that they do, particularly on methadone programmes. During the inquiry, I visited a pharmacist in Torry who had an unusually large number of addicts on his books. He was providing a social and public service. Although shoplifting in his pharmacy was up by 2 or 3 per cent, he thought it was his role to help addicts. If an addict came into his shop who seemed to have health difficulties, the pharmacist would alert the medical authorities or refer the addict to a doctor.
We must have more community and day programmes. I have three or four brief points I wish to make about residential treatment. Most residential treatment is based on the 12-step programme of intensive group therapy. Addicts are isolated from the outside world. That is how the 12-step programme is most effective. Addicts are taken away from the people with whom they have used and from the places where they have used. We desperately need more residential care places. However, I am not necessarily saying that addicts from Aberdeen should go to a treatment centre in Aberdeen. It might well be better for them to go a treatment centre in the Borders, and for addicts from the Borders to come to a treatment centre in Aberdeen.
Secondly, if treatment is going to be effective, addicts must be given the opportunity to build up so-called clean time. If someone is to build up clean time, they will have to spend between six weeks and six months in intensive treatment and then they should go to a halfway house, where they can work towards the crucial stage of being clean for a year. Halfway houses are crucial; otherwise money spent on residential treatment may well be wasted.
Thirdly, funding must be more easily obtainable. There was an addict in Buckhaven in my constituency. His mother was very brave. She fought to get funding from the local health board and local authority so that her son could go to the Links project in Leith. She was meeting his dealers on the high street and they were asking her when he was coming back. The last place he wanted to come back to was Buckhaven. He went to a halfway house down south.
I also want the minister to respond to a point on the care home regulations and their impact on residential treatment. Another key aspect of residential treatment is that addicts should spend as little time as possible on their own. Addicts should not be staying in single rooms. In the most effective treatment centres in the United Kingdom, such as Clouds House in Wiltshire, or in the United States—Cottonwood de Tucson and Sierra Tucson—people share rooms. That helps to make treatment effective and we do not want those care home regulations having a detrimental impact on residential treatment.
Finally, I am glad that Mr Lochhead mentioned alcohol. It should have been mentioned in the previous debate. The Parliament is too ambivalent about alcohol. We have not yet had a debate on the national plan for alcohol. Most people are cross-addicted and alcohol is a serious problem. There are five times as many chronic misusers of alcohol in Scotland as there are heroin addicts. The figure is 250,000. We need far more resources to help them and we probably also need to consider alcohol treatment and testing orders.
I begin by congratulating Richard Lochhead on securing tonight's debate on what is a crucially important subject not just for the north-east but for the rest of Scotland. The scale of the problem in the north-east is truly frightening. It affects not only the urban areas of the north-east, but rural locations, and Fraserburgh has earned an unfortunate and undesirable reputation for the level of heroin use there.
However, I want to focus my comments on the drug problem in the city of Dundee, in the southern part of the north-east, because it has the second highest level of drug misuse in Scotland—only Glasgow has a worse drug problem. An Executive report issued last September gave a more accurate picture of Scotland's hard drug culture and placed Dundee second in the country for heroin and tranquilliser abuse.
The prevalence rate of drug misuse in Scotland is around 2 per cent of the population aged from 15 to 54, yet the prevalence rate in Dundee, at 3.5 per cent, is almost twice that level. Tayside police's drugs co-ordinator, Chris White, said that those findings were in line with the experience on the streets of the city. Of course, the situation on the streets is what matters, because behind the statistics lie the real people whose lives have been blighted by drugs misuse.
I cite the case of a young single mum who came, along with her mother, to see me at my surgery. Her life and the lives of her family effectively have been destroyed by drug misuse. She has lost her house and has huge debts, as does her mother, who has taken on debt to cover her daughter's debts. Of course, a child is in the middle of that, suffering alongside. The young mum has been clean for six months, I think because she realised the effect on her child. I hope that she will be one of the success stories of the intervention of the statutory and voluntary services, but there are countless others who are not so lucky and fall through the net, or for whom the drug rehab places that Richard Lochhead mentioned are unavailable.
Given the scale of the drugs problem in Dundee, it is bizarre that the funding decisions do not reflect that situation. Apart from Glasgow, Tayside has the highest rate of hospital discharges recording drugs misuse; yet while funding to tackle drug misuse has increased over the years, the increases that have been allocated to Tayside have lagged behind the Scottish average. Since 1998, Tayside has received in real terms an ever decreasing per capita allocation of funds.
Furthermore, Tayside's funding for the prevention of transmission of blood-borne viruses has declined since 1998, while the funding in Scotland has risen. That funding mismatch requires some explanation from the minister. I also seek an explanation of the key initiative of diversion from prosecution. Unfortunately, in Dundee there is a six-month waiting list for drug treatment. How can there be diversion from prosecution when the drug treatment is not available to provide that diversion?
Clearly, poverty and deprivation are the key issues behind hardened drug misuse. Yes, we need to put money into services, treatments, drug rehab and so on—that is important—but we also need to give people aspirations and self-esteem, because lack of aspiration and lack of self-esteem provide the breeding ground for drug misuse. Unless we tackle that, we will not be able to tackle this deep-rooted problem in Scotland.
Before I call Maureen Macmillan, I inform members that I am not going to get everybody in in the time that is available. If the minister agrees, I will be prepared to extend the debate until 6 o'clock. I will therefore take a motion without notice to extend the debate.
Motion moved,
That, under Rule 8.14.3, the debate be extended until 6.00 pm.—[Richard Lochhead.]
Motion agreed to.
It so happens that I travelled down on the train from Inverness to Aberdeen in the company of the regional fiscal. Our conversation naturally turned to criminal matters. We talked in particular about the situation in Aberdeen, because later that day, accompanied by other Justice 1 Committee members, I was going to spend the afternoon with police in Aberdeen, hearing about their problems in policing the area and what would be of benefit to them. It was remarkable how quickly the conversation with the fiscal turned to the abuse of drugs in Aberdeen, and the fact that wealthy sectors of the community working in oil and fishing had become addicted to expensive drugs such as heroin. We also discussed the fact that crack cocaine was now appearing on the streets.
When we met the police at police headquarters in Queen Street, they told us of their concerns, which mainly relate to offences that are committed while offenders are out on bail. All the examples that they gave us of that happening were of drug addicts who were continually housebreaking or stealing on the streets to feed their habit.
The police were concerned that sheriffs allowed such people out on bail again and again. We went round the city in a police car and were shown areas where dealers lived, although their houses were not pointed out to us. We were shown the prison and the street corner near the prison where a person who had left the prison had immediately met a dealer to obtain drugs. The prison was in the community where the drug dealers lived and there was no way—unless they were extremely strong-willed—in which a person who left prison could go into that community without falling back into the drug habit.
The big problem is getting rid of dealers, although small-scale dealers can be continually replaced. The help of communities is needed to address the problem of the dealers in their midst. With the Presiding Officer's permission, I will talk about what happens in Easter Ross, where the community in Alness has banded together to get rid of dealers. The group that is involved is Alness Mothers Against Drugs. Some members' relatives have died of drug overdoses and some members' children are on heroin. They are making a concerted effort to free their community of dealers and to work alongside the police to do that. Their efforts have been highly successful.
Despite all the schemes for getting rid of drugs in the community, it is people at the grass roots who must help to rid their communities of this evil. I hope that the Executive will do all that it can to support any such initiatives, wherever they are in Scotland.
There is no denying that drug misuse is a major problem in the north-east and that members who represent the area are only too well aware of its negative impact on far too many of our constituents and their families.
In his motion, Richard Lochhead is correct to link drug misuse with drug-related crime. When a Tayside sheriff was asked recently which crimes were on the increase, he did not hesitate to confirm that the rise was noticeable in the commission of the wide variety of drug-related offences. Drugs cause bullying, mugging and other forms of violence. The associated problems of forgery, prostitution, shoplifting and housebreaking are all carried out by drug users who seek money.
Unfortunately, there is every indication that we are not adequately managing or addressing the problem. The same sheriff said that although he was strongly in favour of supported accommodation and rehabilitation programmes, not enough of such facilities existed throughout the country. Resourcing them is a major problem. It is likely that roll-out of the new drug treatment and testing orders will make the demands on existing resources even greater, so it is important that the Scottish Executive recognises the value of investing in such facilities, which will help to deal with the problem in the north-east.
Given that education is an important element of combating drug misuse effectively, I will talk about children and young people, especially as Aberdeen has recorded the second-highest number of young heroin users, who comprise 4.7 per cent of the total number of addicts in the city. The stepping stones board game was developed as part of the school programme of Scotland Against Drugs and is intended for primary 1 to primary 3 pupils. One pilot area for the game was in the north-east.
An evaluation of the game has recently been published and showed that the initiative largely met its aims. Parents expressed some concerns about whether children of that age were too young to discuss drug-related issues, because drug education sits uneasily with our view of the world of young children. It is difficult to strike a balance between making children informed and having them lose their natural innocence, but the game is a useful starting point and it encouraged wider discussion.
Feedback indicated that knowing the dangers at a young age can be more of an advantage than not knowing until high school. One parent said that. A high percentage of children said that they felt more able to talk about health with those with whom they played the game, who were usually their parents. Children reported that they had learnt something new about health from the game and that that helped them to stay healthy. It would be a helpful additional step for that message to be delivered to all children and young people in the north-east. I hope that the minister will confirm that that can happen.
I congratulate Richard Lochhead on securing the debate. I am grateful to have been given the opportunity to speak in a debate of such importance.
I wish to make four main points about the fight against drugs. First, although funds are available, they are being used in the wrong way. Rather than be used to catch drug users, they should be used to catch drug traffickers. That is a priority. It must be remembered that the drug barons are so cash rich that the funds that are available to drug traffickers are much larger than those that are used against them. That fact puts our police at a huge disadvantage.
Secondly, more help is required for users and addicts. It seems that proper treatment is available only to the very rich or to those who are in prison. People should not have to commit a crime in order to get treatment. That situation must be changed. We must ensure that people who want and need help to cure their addictions can get that help.
Thirdly, not enough is being done to stop young people from starting to use drugs in the first place or to stay off drugs. That situation can be changed by better education and by imparting more information about the great harm that is done by drugs. Every time a playing field is sold for development, more drug addicts are created among our young people. We must create more opportunities for games, sports and hobbies for young Scots. It is often the case nowadays that both parents work and home relationships can be far from perfect. Young people need encouragement and facilities. If they do not have them, many will become disillusioned and bored and seek excitement from drugs.
Will the member give way?
Can I give way, Presiding Officer?
No. Our time is tight. I want to squeeze in the last speakers.
Fourthly, I want to ask whether enough is being done to identify the real financial costs of drug abuse. Crime now exists in areas where it hardly existed before. Crime costs our economy many millions and there is also a cost in human terms. What is the cost to the lives of addicts and the lives of parents who lose their children to drugs? What is the cost to victims of drug-related crime? The answer to those questions is not known, but the questions are so significant that answering them must be a huge priority for all Governments. That is an area in which the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Executive can and must make a difference for the future of Scotland.
I call Stewart Stevenson. We will see whether time is left after him for the two remaining members.
Thank you for putting pressure on me, Presiding Officer.
Is it not ironic that we debated the alternatives to custody earlier this afternoon? During the debate, we heard about diversion from prosecution. However, given the fact that we are told that 80 per cent of the offences in this area arise from drug offences, what we are looking for is diversion from offending. Anything that we can do and any ideas that we can pick up in that regard are to be welcomed.
I have always thought that there are three traditional Rs in the criminal justice system, just as there are in education. However, the three Rs in the criminal justice system are retribution, restitution and rehabilitation and the greatest of those is rehabilitation. It is in that area that the north-east is perhaps most lacking.
My colleague Richard Lochhead spoke about the lengthy waits for non-urgent referrals in the north-east. In essence, people have to wait for over a year. I want to pick up on a point that Keith Raffan made and enter a note of caution. He suggested that it was advantageous to send offenders to another area for rehabilitation. I am not at all certain about that, although we should be prepared to experiment.
A local addict from my constituency was sent to the south of England for rehabilitation because the nearest available programme was located there.
As it happens, his entry to the programme was delayed by a couple of weeks and, footloose in a foreign community with insufficient funds, he committed another crime.
Will the member give way?
I do not have time to do so.
That addict is now back in prison.
However, I do not have a fixed mind on the issue and neither should the minister. We should simply be cautious in our approach.
One of the issues that we should address is resources. For every £303 that Scotland as a whole gets for each addict, the north-east receives £242. Over the past four years, there has been a per capita increase in funding in this area of 77 per cent, while the increase across Scotland has been 90 per cent.
Of late, some suggestions about how to deal with addicts have been made. For example, it has been suggested that we return to general practitioner prescribing, which is what my father did in the 1950s. Alas, I think that the world has changed: there are now many more addicts, and they have descended into chaotic lifestyles. However, I am prepared to consider the suggestion.
I am very reluctant to consider recategorising—and essentially decriminalising—drugs if it means that addicts remain in contact with the criminal underworld. We will simply create an escalator from soft drugs such as cannabis to hard drugs. The only proposal that I would consider in this respect relates back to the Gothenburg experiment with alcohol in the 19th century, in which communities set up pubs to ensure that the profits from the sale of the drug alcohol were used for community purposes. If someone discovered a way of doing that with drugs, I might reluctantly be persuaded to change my position.
In the previous debate, the minister referred to experimenting, testing and measuring. Let us try everything. For example, we should not rule out harm reduction versus abstinence measures or supporting independent agencies as well as those connected to the Government and local authorities. Let us keep all our options open.
I have only a minute in hand, which in such a wide-ranging debate I propose to give to the minister. I apologise to Margo MacDonald and Christine Grahame, who sat through the debate but were not called.
Like other members, I congratulate Richard Lochhead on securing this debate. It is appropriate that we should have it today, although we will probably need to return to the issue and have a broader debate on drugs and drug policy in the future. However, as usual with members' business debates, this debate has been very useful and many important points have been made.
The fact that the Executive has committed £130 million in additional funding over three years is a testament to our determination to try to sort out the problems that have been mentioned and to ensure that treatment and rehabilitation are available. I am sanguine about the results that we are achieving. I realise that the problems are significant and that we will not be able to make major changes overnight. That said, we are making significant advances.
I regret that I was not able to take part in the debate and would like to pick up on some of the comments made by my colleague Stewart Stevenson. Are all the options, whether for the north-east or for elsewhere in Scotland, open to the Executive? How constrained will it be in its policy making after the publication of the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee's report and now that the Home Office is in chaos?
The Home Affairs Committee's report is interesting and we will need to examine it. As Margo MacDonald is aware, certain matters are reserved, but we will consider the implementation of any policy in a Scottish context.
I want to examine the extent of the problem in the north-east and to try to put it in some perspective. Although 5,400 drug misusers were involved in the McKeganey research, Irene McGugan raised an interesting point when she said that, because Aberdeen has younger injecters, there is a growing problem in the area. The Executive recognises that that increase is a significant problem for Aberdeen.
I should point out that the number of deaths is down slightly from 1999. Furthermore, the rate of deaths in this area—at 5.9 per 100,000—is less than Glasgow's rate of 11.5 per 100,000 and Argyll and Clyde's rate of 7.3 per 100,000. Nevertheless, as Shona Robison pointed out, Dundee has the second-highest level of drugs misuse. We should be very clear that the Executive has substantially increased the resources for Grampian, as it has done for every area. The £750,000 increase in funding for treatment, which has been ring fenced on the national health service side of the funding streams, means that there should be significant improvements.
On the question of resources, my colleague Maureen Macmillan alluded to the Justice 1 Committee's meeting with Grampian police yesterday. Its representatives told us that they are using up their resources chasing people who breach bail. Maureen Macmillan gave the example of a lady who had breached bail on five occasions to feed her drug habit. Will the minister consider looking in an holistic—if I may use that awful word—way at the resources that the police use when people breach bail to feed their drug habits?
Christine Grahame makes an important point. We need to examine the problem in an holistic way. If she had been a fly on the wall at the seminars and meetings that I have been attending over the past three months, she would know that I have hammered home time and again the fact that the agencies cannot exist in silos. If we do not join them up, we are bound to fail.
However, all the resourcing streams that we are putting in are to be joined up through the drug action teams. Those teams are sometimes also called drug and alcohol action teams and in that respect they are already joined up in every area except, for specific reasons, in Glasgow and Edinburgh. In some areas, the DATs also deal with smoking and I strongly welcome that. The Home Affairs Committee heard evidence from a number of individuals that, if there is a gateway process, tobacco, alcohol and cannabis can all act as that gateway. We must join everything up; I believe that that is important. I work closely with my ministerial colleagues who have responsibility for health. The interventions unit covers alcohol, smoking and drugs. We have joined that up and we are making a major effort.
DATs are central to delivery, but we know that the public do not see them—they are almost invisible, as our research has demonstrated. We are monitoring the DATs. We asked them to produce an annual business plan and we talked to them about the form of that plan, so that it is not bureaucratic. We give individual feedback to the DATs, to take account of the fact that, as Keith Raffan said, they are moving at differing speeds and levels of ability. We have put money into funding the co-ordinators who link in with the DATs, to give them a measure of stability so that they are not just talking shops, as they used to be. We are endeavouring and pushing hard to ensure that communities are involved in the DATs along with voluntary organisations and users.
On funding for DATs, does the minister accept that resources are not being allocated on a needs basis? Does he have any thoughts about how he might fund DATs on a needs basis in future?
I thank Brian Adam for that helpful intervention, which allows me to make a point that I missed out. At the moment, the NHS gets funding for DATs essentially according to the Arbuthnott formula. I know how the north-east feels about the Arbuthnott formula, as I was a member of the Health and Community Care Committee when we debated the matter at length. There are arguments about Grampian, but I know that the area was not one of the winners from the Arbuthnott formula. However, the Argyll and Clyde NHS Board area is only minimally above Grampian in respect of funding and the funding in Dumfries and Galloway is only £219 per problem user, as opposed to £242 in Grampian.
The other stream of funding is through grant-aided expenditure, which we know is also a crude instrument. We have undertaken to take prevalence data into account in any future allocation of resources.
Will the minister give way?
I am afraid that I do not have time for another intervention. If Richard Lochhead would like to write to me on a specific issue, I will be happy to answer his questions.
We are aware of the problem of allocating resources and we have given additional funding to some of the smaller units. At one unit in the Western Isles, the allocation is £1,345 per addict. However, there is a baseline and there is only in fact a small amount of funding.
We recognise that waiting times are totally unacceptable at present, particularly in Aberdeen, Dundee and Edinburgh. I do not know whether we should go for targets, along the English line, of saying that everybody must be receiving treatment within four weeks. We are giving the health boards time to see whether the money that we have only recently put in achieves a reduction in waiting times. However, I assure members that I will be holding the DATs to account on the target waiting times, which are absolutely crucial. DTTOs are not a problem, because treatments are funded separately in relation to DTTOs and drugs courts.
I do not have time to say all that I wanted to say, but I must add a few final comments. Family support is important and I recently attended the first national conference on that. Bereavement counselling, the involvement of grandparents and mechanisms to deal with benefit problems can all play a part. We have launched the stepping stones programme nationally and are rolling out other educational programmes, but we must listen to young people and find out whether those programmes are good. We have put a lot of money into sports and diversion from prosecution. I do not have time to go into that issue either, but it, too, is important.
On the question of a drugs court in the north-east, we will evaluate the existing urban and rural courts and see what works. The local team and the local health board must decide on a detoxification centre, but we will look at the issue nationally.
I welcome the debate and the Presiding Officer's forbearance. I do not have enough time to tackle the issue in the depth that I would like to, but I am grateful for the extra time that I have been given. We have upgraded the committee that I chaired in the Executive to a full Cabinet committee. That gives me the freedom to act in ways that I might not otherwise have had as chairman.
I promise my absolute dedication to the problem—members will know about that dedication—and I will take on board the points that were raised, many of which were very interesting.
Meeting closed at 18:00.