Drug use should be treated as the social issue it is

This is not a failure of the rule of law, or a failure of the medical profession, or a failure of community-based drug services. It is, in my view, a failure of successive governments across the four nations to have a cohesive strategy to deal with this issue. Drug use is not a medical issue, although it can cause medical issues; it is a social issue and should be dealt with as such.

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Drug users have many reasons for using drugs and engaging in problematic use.

As a drugs worker, I was involved in needle exchange, motivational interviewing, street-based work and other services for users. This was funded by Drug and Alcohol Action Teams and local NHS trusts. The main objective was to provide a harm-reduction model for users, so that the spread of drug-related infections such as HIV and viral hepatitis was reduced.

Harm reduction is a model based on social, medical and psychological elements for each user or group of users and targets in the main problematic users, while providing education about drug use and strategies for avoidance in schools, colleges and universities. It required partnership working and communication, adequate funding and a cohesive strategy that public-sector and third-sector groups could subscribe to. This is not happening at the moment in any cohesive way, and the current piecemeal approach is not serving communities or families of problematic drug users.

I don’t agree that the SNP are wholly to blame. The last national drug strategy had cross-party support and was well funded across the UK. It was one of the few things that Westminster agreed on over successive governments.

Any change to drug policy and strategy must have cross-party support to survive and must be seen as a priority. If these deaths were from a particular food or pathogen, more urgent action would be taken.

It is through carefully giving all elements of addiction equal importance in a co-ordinated national strategy, together with policing priorities, that we may be able to reduce deaths and support those who are in recovery.

Designated Treatment Centres are a good start, especially if they are multi-functional, non-judgmental places which take an holistic view of the individual user and include social, mental and physical health support as well as other caring initiatives.

The Rotterdam services have worked well for several decades. The Portuguese pragmatic approach to decriminalising drugs, together with that of the Netherlands, shows that steps can be taken to reduce harm and even take-up.

We need to support all vulnerable people in our society, and that includes drug users.

Carol Wood
Cullen

THIS is not the time to be assessing who was or is responsible for the tragedy facing so many families in Scotland. That will not prevent a single death.

Historic and current drugs policies have failed, and something different needs to be tried in the face of the rise in drug deaths in Scotland.

Staying with the current procedures is not an option.

As deaths are apparently spread over all ages – ranging from those who are now paying the price for using traditional drugs for many years, to younger people using drugs that have only recently become available – it is clear it is a complex situation which will need a number of different approaches to tackle the drug death problem.

Taken on its own, the situation in Scotland is serious and needs to be dealt with out of the blaze of publicity; once that abates, the claim that Dundee has the highest death rate in Scotland, the UK, EU and US needs to be verified, and those tackling the problem need to know if Scotland has a unique problem with drugs or a unique method of recording drug-related deaths.

It may be that the method of recording in Scotland has revealed the extent of a problem that has yet to be exposed in other locations. Either way, co-ordinated action is required from the Scottish and UK governments to deal with this crisis.

John Jamieson
South Queensferry

COULD Vonny LeClerc, or some other Jewish person, please explain to me just what I can say that is critical of Israel without automatically being branded as anti-semitic (Trying to be heard as a Jew feels like a futile fights, July 16)? This is a genuine request.

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I have no wish to upset Jewish people but neither am I willing to remain silent when Israel commits an act which I find reprehensible. For example, when David Pratt not so long ago wrote an article pointing out how far Israel has gone to becoming an apartheid state, was he being anti-Semitic?

PS I have no connection whatsoever with the Labour Party.

Andrew M Fraser
Inverness