Chamber and committees

We know that Police Scotland has created an operational procedure that will dictate how any such facility is policed, and it is for Police Scotland to communicate that.

You are absolutely 100 per cent right, Ms Clark, to ask about how the staff of such a facility would be protected. It is for Susanne Millar to reassure us about the advice that Glasgow has taken on that. As the minister, I believe that the individuals who will be supporting some of our most vulnerable citizens should themselves be protected. I will hand over to Susanne to answer that.

It was just to say that the Lord Advocate will not proceed with her prosecution statement unless she has satisfied herself about the process.

I will just briefly say in response to that that I would ask members of the joint committee to reach out to Police Scotland, put questions to it, and perhaps take its evidence, because I think that that will help you to form the bigger picture. Police Scotland has been supportive in understanding the need for such a facility. Assistant Chief Constable Ritchie was behind the proposal from the beginning. Police Scotland has come on a journey as regards playing a role on the issue. It was probably an oversight that none of its representatives was available at the community council meetings. I do not think that either of us can speak for Police Scotland, except to say that, since 2016, it has certainly supported our endeavours.

Thank you, convener. I thank all three committees for coming together to focus on this issue, which cuts across all your portfolios.

We are now at the midpoint of the national mission and we have seen significant progress in many areas. There has been a huge increase in naloxone distribution, improvement in our surveillance and early warning systems, progress on the implementation of medication assisted treatment standards and an increase in residential rehabilitation referrals and capacity.

As a Government, we have taken a truly whole-systems approach to tackling drug deaths and the underlying drivers. Our response to the Scottish Drug Deaths Taskforce set out bold actions, including in mental health and oral health, community pharmacies and developing a concessionary travel pilot. We recently published our second annual report, which I hope members have had a chance to read to see the depth and range of work that is being delivered.

That progress is not just due to our increased investment. It is very much due to a huge, concerted effort by people and organisations right across the country, and my respect and thanks go out to them. This truly is a national mission.

In 2022, we saw the first annual reduction in drug deaths since 2017. Although I welcome that record fall, I reaffirm my commitment to continuing the national mission and recognise that we still have a lot of work to do. I will never underestimate the scale of the challenge that we continue to face, which includes responding to new threats such as synthetic opioids and the ever-increasing use of stimulants. We will continue to implement evidence-based policies to reduce deaths and to improve the lives of people affected by substance use, and we are continuing with our commitment to put people with lived and living experience at the heart of everything that we do.

We recently had a debate in the chamber that was focused on drug law reform. That debate highlighted the limitations and the barriers that we still face. A key facet of drug law reform is the ability for Scotland to implement actions that we know will save lives. One example is safer drug consumption facilities, and I again welcome the position from the Lord Advocate and the confirmation from the United Kingdom Government that it will not seek to block or prevent the proposals in Glasgow.

Safer drug consumption facilities are important, but they are only one small part of a much wider picture when it comes to supporting people wherever they are. I look forward to the opportunity to provide wider updates through this evidence session.

Thank you very much for your question. I echo your recognition of the work that this joint committee does. I think that joint committees are invaluable, and that we should be doing more where we can.

On drug checking, a two-year study was funded by the Drug Deaths Taskforce to look at what Scotland’s drug-checking facilities look like and what we need. One of the things that the study told us was that we need them to be situated in some of our bigger cities. Aberdeen city is obviously one such area. The study also told us that, on top of Dundee, Glasgow and Aberdeen, there is a need for a national hub. Hopefully, that will be sited within the University of Dundee. We recognise that, although we need to have the drug-checking facilities in communities within easy access of individuals, we also need to have a national facility that will allow for robust checking of the results that are found at local level. Perhaps, at one point, we will be able to move to the model that exists in Wales—the Welsh Emerging Drugs and Identification of Novel Substances, or WEDINOS, service—through which people can post in drugs to be checked.

When it comes to timescales, we have had some clarification from the Home Office regarding some of the information that will need to be supplied and submitted by local authorities with their applications. One of the issues that we are trying to work through concerns the legalities surrounding the transportation of substances. I think that, once we get into a position where that is nailed down, the applications will go in as quickly as we need them to go in.

I gather that you are talking about safer consumption facilities.

Absolutely. I recognise everything that Alex Cole-Hamilton outlined. We invested in our rapid action drug alert system because we needed to know what was happening in real terms on the ground. The most recent rapid action drug alerts and response—RADAR—report talks about the fact that we are seeing synthetic stronger opioids making their presence felt in the UK and in Scotland. That gives me huge cause for concern.

Just this week, I was on a call with some of our international experts from Canada and the States to talk about what they would do differently now if they were able to do it again, and to ask about what we are doing in Scotland and what we could do that would help us to address what could potentially be coming down the line.

Thinking back to Russell Findlay’s question about serious and organised crime, it is far easier to get hold of and transport synthetics than it is to cultivate a crop that is dependent on so many other factors—never mind geopolitical ones. I am really worried about what we could potentially see, and that is why we need to ensure that we have the ability for drug testing and checking to be done.

People need to know what is in substances, and the Government also needs to know what is happening. The ASSIST—a surveillance study in illicit substance toxicity—project pilot, which is on-going at the Queen Elizabeth university hospital in Glasgow, does routine testing of individuals when they come in to find out what substances are at play. That information and surveillance will help us, but we need to ensure that we speak to the global leaders that are already dealing with the issue.

Shortly, I will convene a round table with other international experts on the issue, and the hope is that once that work progresses it can be opened up to allow other parliamentarians to be part of it, so that the whole Parliament can ensure that we understand what the threat is that is coming down the line and how quickly it could take hold.

Presiding Officer, I am pleased to open this afternoon’s debate on drug law reform. I regret that I am unable to be there in person, due to being ill with Covid.

Problem drug use impacts on many people in Scotland. It leads to lives ending prematurely and tragically. In 2022, 1,051 lives in Scotland were lost to drugs and, although the number was lower than the number in 2021, it is still far too many. More than 1,000 families have lost a loved one, and I extend my heartfelt condolences to each one of them. The drug deaths emergency in Scotland remains a priority for the Government.

The topic of the debate is drug law reform. It sets out evidence-based actions that we would take, were we empowered to change the legal environment in which we find ourselves. No one should infer from that that we are not doing everything within our current powers to address the crisis, or that we will not continue to learn and adapt to meet the challenges that we face in the current legislation. However, there is clear evidence to show that much more could be achieved if we had the authority to fully implement the public health approach to which we are committed.

The principles upon which our national mission sit are that problematic drug use is rooted in poverty and trauma and is a health condition. That is why we are committed to reducing the number of people who are dying of overdose and to improving their lives.

The £250 million that is being spent during the current parliamentary session has already contributed significantly to that goal. The medication-assisted treatment standards are improving access and service delivery to people who are in need of treatment and support, and the number of approved residential rehab placements has grown to 812. including facilities that are specifically targeted at families and women with children.

Our naloxone distribution programme has won international acclaim and we are progressing our commitments to safer drug consumption facilities and drug-checking initiatives within our existing powers.

I recognise the concern that the member has just intimated. Our whole-family approach, which our whole family wellbeing fund underpins, will help to secure additional resources and support for those front-line social workers because we recognise their value in the lives of our families and young people across the country.

We are supporting a broad range of community-based initiatives and looking upstream to understand how we can support people to avoid drug-related crises at a much earlier stage in their lives. We know that childhood poverty and trauma are often factors in later drug dependence. Our Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017, which sets out targets to reduce the number of children who are experiencing the effects of poverty and our Promise to care-experienced young people, aims to improve outcomes for those young people and help them to achieve their potential.

Stigma drives people away from help and creates a raft of additional problems for people who use drugs and for their families, and we are setting out a plan to address that long-term problem. Through our charter of rights, which was drafted by the national collaborative—a group that is made up of a broad cross-section of our community, including people with lived and living experience—we will directly support people who have or are affected by problem substance use to claim their rights to the highest attainable standard of health.

All that work and more is currently under way as part of our public health approach. The so-called deterrent approach has been shown to be completely ineffective in reducing drug use, and to be counterproductive in addressing the underlying causes of that phenomenon. The Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 is more than 50 years old and was designed against the background and political environment of the time. However, the landscape has changed and the amount of international evidence that is available has grown.

I have given examples of the significant progress that has already been made to this point through our national mission, but current laws hamper our ability to implement further measures that are known to save lives, which is why we published our drug law reform paper “A Caring, Compassionate and Human Rights Informed Drug Policy for Scotland” in July, with the support and endorsement of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which comprises former heads of state from countries as diverse as New Zealand, Switzerland and Peru.

Our reform paper proposes immediate changes to the law that will allow us to implement fully a public health approach that has had significant results in a wide range of other countries by saving lives and encouraging people to seek support and treatment earlier than they do when they fear punishment. That approach includes: the provision of a clear statutory framework for supervised drug consumption facilities and drug checking across Scotland; increased access to life-saving naloxone through reclassification; changes to simplify and improve licensing to encourage use of the full suite of treatment options that are available to us, including heroin-assisted treatment; the removal of the stigmatising and discriminatory exemption in the Equality Act 2010 (Disability) Regulations 2010, which excludes drug dependency; and a commitment to full consideration of decriminalising drugs for personal use.

People are 16 times more likely to die of a drug death in Scotland in the poorest 20 per cent of the country than they are in the wealthiest 20 per cent. Criminalising our way out of a drug death crisis that is rooted in health and social issues often has the effect of punishing people from our poorest communities for being poor and having experienced trauma. The Government is clear. The war on drugs is over, no one won, and the main casualties were not organised criminals, but the poorest and most vulnerable people in our societies who need our help, not to be driven further into the margins of society.

We have learned from evidence around the world and have committed to reducing the harms that are associated with drug taking by promoting agency, helping people to make better choices and giving them accurate real-time information about substances and their effects. We continue to progress our plans for safer drug consumption facilities because the evidence that supports their efficacy is extensive—16 countries currently operate legal drug consumption rooms, all of which are effective in saving lives and improving health outcomes.

The proposed facilities are designed to comply with our current legislation so they will still be restricted by the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and will not fully meet the lowest threshold criteria that we would prefer, but they will be a positive start on our journey towards protecting all our citizens. The facilities will help to demonstrate efficacy at the national level, as they have been shown to do in other countries.

No country offers a single template for tackling drug use, but I make no apology for proposing approaches that have been shown to make a positive difference. New Zealand and Canada in particular are investing in drug-checking services with as few barriers to access as is possible.

In the past two years, the University of Stirling has undertaken work to look at how we could roll out a drug-checking pilot within Scotland. During that research phase, several potential locations were identified. We know that Aberdeen, Glasgow and Dundee have expressed their wish to be part of the pilot. The research was published at the end of July and we are now helping those areas to apply for licences. We await a final communication from the United Kingdom Home Office that will help us to ensure that those licensing applications can go in and will be met with the most sympathetic ear possible. I will keep members updated on that.

Accidental overdoses often occur because people do not know what is in the substances that they are taking. Scotland faces a significant challenge with street benzodiazepines, which are extremely variable in their make-up and strength. We must therefore seek to implement drug-checking measures that will lower the risk and keep people safer, particularly with the potential of even more dangerous synthetic drugs reaching our streets.