Think the unthinkable
Herewith an opinion tendered by Holyrood's Presiding Officer, Alex Fergusson.
He writes: "Whatever your views and opinions of alcohol and drugs are, there is a good chance that 10 other people will disagree with you."
My only dissent would be numerical. I suspect the dispute factor might be somewhat higher - as responses to this blog may, in due course, indicate.
Mr Fergusson was previewing today's report from the Scottish Futures Forum, set up by Holyrood to think the unthinkable. (The "unthinkable" being defined as whatever an elected politican dare not advance.)
On this occasion, the Forum's report deals with drugs, part of a wider-ranging review of Scotland's nexus with addiction.
Among sundry bold statements, today's report advocates "consumption rooms" for addicts, the controlled and regulated sale of cannabis and the prescription of heroin instead of methadone.
Mr Fergusson did not have to wait long for disagreement to emerge.
His own erstwhile colleague, Annabel Goldie, said the Forum was effectively calling for "shooting galleries".
She implied that the authors were living in the past.
Ms Goldie, of course, was instrumental in encouraging SNP Ministers to develop a new drugs strategy which emphasises efforts to get users off drugs, rather than simply containing their habit.
Given that, it is perhaps understandable that she should seek to bolster the emerging new strategy, rather than pay heed to this alternative perspective.
However, I am not at all sure that it is helpful to be so instantly dismissive.
For example, here is a quotation: "Treatment interventions and recovery networks make one of the significant contributions to reducing alcohol and drug harm and should be strengthened over the short and medium term."
That could be a quote from Ms Goldie or from Fergus Ewing, the minister who announced the new strategy.
It is, in fact, a key recommendation from today's report.
Yes, the authors are advocating deliberately radical solutions. But they are trying, from a different standpoint, to bring about "successful and sustained recovery from drug and alcohol problems."
And the authors of the report? A team headed by a former Director of Education and a former Deputy Chief Constable. Scarcely anti-establishment. Why, they even contrive to quote Proust without laughing.
Do I think their report will be instantly adopted? No. Do I think it worthy of scrutiny and debate? Yes.
I'm 
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~18~RS~)
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I heard the interview this morning on the radio with the Mayor of Vancouver where a similiar system to the proposals being currently put forward have been in operation for several years, according to Vancouver's Mayor they have evidence to support Vancouver's approach is having a positive effect on reducing the use and associated problems of drug users. I can understand Ms Goldie's dislike of the proposals, it is difficult to accept that society provides the means to allow drug users to continue their anti-social habit, but given that every other thinkable option has to some extent or other failed, then the time has come for the unthinkable.
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Glad to see concentration on the fact that anything put forward should not be instantly dismissed simply because it does not agree with one's own opinion - debate and discussion is what lifts us above the level of the animals after all.
With regard to the substance, I am happy to see a new report come out on drugs and the associated problems. Having read Ben Elton's 'High Society' I became interested in how drugs should be treated, and have to say that with a bit more research I now believe certainly the lower class drugs should be legalised and provided for, for a whole variety of reasons, both ethical and practical. If such a strategy works for the lower end drugs, why not provide for the harder drugs as well? Such would be my opinion on it, though I admit I am not hugely well informed and am open to any new ideas.
As for Ms Goldie's reaction, she has gone somewhat down in my estimation, for two reasons: firstly, as Mr Taylor rightly points out, nothing should be dismissed instantly without due regard, particularly a report such as this on such an important topic; and secondly, it looks like a knee-jerk reaction and swing back to right, in an attempt at scare-monger to make people believe that drug nuts would run wild on the streets if this were to go ahead. Poor show.
I have one final question - with regard to the remark that legalising cannabis is an idea that is in the past, was it so legalised at any point in this country? Or is it merely the classification, de-classifications and re-classifications that Ms Goldie is referring to?
Perhaps, having given such a long time for repression to work, we should try regulated allowance and see what happens. I believe it would be a lot better.
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Well,Brian.Mrs Goldie should have lived in the past a little while longer because I read recently that heroin was prescribed in the"bad"old days by GP's.I don't know how far back it was,possibly pre-NHS,or where they got their supplies from but there must be something to be said for it being available locally from a legal safe source.Rather than the adulterated muck you may be in danger of getting from your friendly neighbourhood drug dealer.
When it comes down to it,do people really care if people are addicted throughout their lives to something or other,if it's their own lives?People scream and shout"what about the children!!"and demand that social workers take away the children of drug addicts.But I'm sure we all know children growing up with a parent(s) who may be addicted to alcohol,gambling or domestic violence.Who shouts as hard for them?
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This proposal is certainly worth debate.
As we all know, Prohibition of Drugs is not Regulation.
The fact that a black market exists is testimony to the fact.
The simple step of Legalising Cannabis use, and regulating it in a more controlled manner will go along way to alleviating the "problem".
Just now we have a somewhat combatitive approach the Cannabis issue by the Government, especially at Westminster.
I recommend anyone interested in the plain facts about Cannabis visit the LCA (legalise Cannabis Alliance) website. www.lca-uk.org
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Thank goodness. A search for a "solution" to the problem has begun rather than just repeating the old mistakes.
The current "prohibition" situation is doing nothing other than providing the circumstances for organised crime to establish itself, just as it did in America in the 1920's with alcohol. Think I'm off-beam - consider last year's gun battles in Main Street Cambuslang - Cambuslang for God's sake - what else do you think that was about?
Surely we should all be allowed to go to Hell by the means of our own devising?
And yet, oh yes and it's a big AND YET - I've seen (at second hand) the damage hard drugs can do to a friend, just about anything should be done to avoid that.
This committee has a grave responsibility on its hands. I do not envy them. But maybe, just maybe, it would be worth giving some of their more "adventurous" ideas a try.
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Like alcoholism, drug abuse treatment really only works when the victim recognises a problem and seeks voluntary treatment.
I have no expertise to offer, but I have spoken to drugs workers and a key element seems to be accommodating the addict immediately when they seek help, either residential or on a programme. My understanding is that addicts are given appointments at various future times. Of course on the day, he/she may be heavily under the influence and the appointment is missed.
I'd like to think if I was addicted and went for help, someone would say: "So glad you came. Come in, we'll check you over, put you on a treatment and you can stay until you're clean."
Simplistic? Certainly. Unrealistic? I'd want to know why. Perhaps someone could explain or offer a better idea?
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Sounds like interesting fresh thinking. If the evidence suggests that this is likely to succeed, a local pilot could test it in the Scottish context.
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I notice that the "Unthinkable" solutions are all extremley liberal ones.I have other ideas they should consider :
1) A Zero Tolerance approach ,I understand that this has been successful in Sweden, the only Nation in the Western World that has actually managed to reverse the trend of rising Drug Abuse.
Mandatory Sentances for Drug Dealers - no more Courts calling for Social Reports,no more "My Mammy wisinae nice tae me",no more "I did it to feed my addiction".Lets take sentencing of dealers out of the hands of Judges and into the real World and make it an instrument of social policy.
3) Stiffer Sentences for those commiting Offences aggravated by Drug Addiction.
How about those for "Unthinkable" Solutions ? . Maybe it is too late for this Generation but it would mean that the next one would be growing up in an atmosphere in which drugs are considered beyond the pale,knowing that involvement in Drug Crime means years and even decades of imprisonment.
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It is all very well thinking the unthinkable in terms of solutions to perceived problems, but what would really help is if we could get clear and reach a consensus or majority view on what is it we want the solution to deliver ? Less drug use ? How much less ? Less drug-associated crime ? How much less ? Less people dying from drug use ? How many less ? Unless we have a clear aim in mind and agree what that it is measurable terms before we adopt any new ideas, we will keep returning to this for decades.
Which reminds me Brian. Why don't you, with your unique access to these people, pose these questions to them and get meaningful answers ?
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Although I have no particular interest in this subject and certainly no specialist knowledge, I have forced myself to read the report in question, because plainly the problem which it addresses is, whether we like it or not, of central importance. I feel myself not to be entitled to ignore it, in other words, even though I would prefer to do so.
I knew an old lady who lived in a little bungalow in a nice but modest part of a small town in Perthshire. She was very old and frail but managed well enough to live alone and fend for herself. A kindly old soul and universally liked and respected, her little gently happy world was brought crashing down one fine morning as she made her way as usual to the shops on foot along her usual route, a route taken by everyone else in the street where she lived except, of course, those who chose to refrain from saving the planet by insisting on taking to motor cars to bypass the shops in the main street and drive to the more distant supermarket. Their worlds did not come crashing down that day, only that of the old-fashioned little dear who bravely stuck to her virtuous pedestrian habit although over the years changes had taken place on one side of it at a certain point, which is where the incident occurred that changed her life and shortened it.
The local authority had established a small housing estate on the north side of the route, and in recent years strangers without any means of support in the town had been brought in from the nearest large town. What was the reason for depositing them there? They had, apparently, nothing with which to occupy themselves but, so one heard, aimless inactivity and troublesome behaviour of one sort and another, which resulted apparently from spending much of the money that the state provided them with on alcohol. There was also talk of illegal drugs. But how could that be, as the provision of subsidised housing by the local authority and the provision of an income by the state for indolently hanging about pestering their neighbours could hardly provide them with the means to purchase illegal drugs, which even the uninitiated know to be expensive?
The answer to the question revealed itself as one of these alarming individuals stepped out in front of the old lady suddenly that morning, struck her in the face, knocking her down to the ground, where she was left bleeding after her bag containing her house keys and her purse, in which was the small amount of money that she had intended to spend on food for herself, was snatched away, never to be seen again.
For some time no one came to help her, because no one could see her from their cars as they sped past. Eventually someone saw her and the police and medical assistance were summoned. I understand that no one was ever charged with the crime. As for the old lady, she had been robbed of her self-confidence and independence as well as her money and house keys. The locks were quickly changed, and her physical wounds healed, slowly, but she did not live for very long after that. The troublesome people who lived on beside her shopping route eventually indulged in one all-night party too many and were returned to the large town from which they had been imported for no apparent reason, although one surmises that it had probably had something to do with previous trouble-making in another council house in that town. No doubt, sooner or later, further troublemaking will result in their being brought back down the road so that some other frail and unsuspecting poor old dear unfamiliar with the ways of people of this type can be beaten senseless for her pension.
I have sought to approach the question of drug abuse by focusing attention upon a victim of the sort of crime which commonly finances it because I care about this victim, deeply, just as I care about all such victims, past, present and yet to come. They matter to me. The scum who beat up an old lady and condemn her to death in order to rob her of the little money that she has so that they can feed their vile and contemptible anti-social habits do not matter to me in the slightest. They have forfeited the right to matter to me, just as they should forfeit their liberty and be locked up and treated for their dangerous addiction until they are cured of it. What to do with them then? File them away in another council house with nothing to do but fall back into their fould old ways? I think not. Oblige them instead to become qualified to earn a living in whatever locality they are to reside. In that way one day they too may own a little bungalow and make their way to the shops to spend well-gotten rather than ill-gotten gains.
If there is anything in the Scottish Futures Forum report which is likely to make frail old ladies any safer on their way to the shops to spend their pensions, I would be obliged if someone would point it out for me.
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Why "Think the Unthinkable" or is common sense and logic not allowed in the way we wish to be governed. Opium was brought into these islands centuries ago by the ruling classes to keep the masses more compliant.
When one makes things illegal then all that happens is that it increases the criminal element which means that people shout for more police and legislation which backfires in the erosion of the general freedoms of law abiding citizens. Our prisons are full of drugs because that is the only way that the inmates can be controlled in a safe manner for the officers in charge. Locking people up for drug useage has never worked and never will.
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Opium was brought into these islands centuries ago by the ruling classes to keep the masses more compliant.
I thought we were all doing a pretty good job with gin and old-time religion. I think opium was actually a cash crop that we (the Brits) were keen to sell to the Chinese addicts hence the wars with China and the little matter of Hong Kong. In that any Brits were getting wasted on heroin it was more your upper and upper-middle class Sherlock Holmes types rather than the great hero proletariat of the industrial revolution.
Plenty of beer and gin for those boys.
But yeah, think the unthinkable. Buy it direct from the Columbians and give it away free on prescription. AIDS transmission, drug crime, nasty gang violence practically wiped out overnight. Massive public health improvements due to control of purity and dosage. Managed addiction just like we do with alcohol. Anybody who wants to quit can go to NA meetings or their doctors just like they can with alcohol.
A win-win for society. Less deaths, less crime, courts not bogged down with continual drug-related crime so more prison spaces for those who really, desperately need to be banged up for longer.
So it'll never happen.
Less work for solicitors? Are you mad? For whose benefit do you think the country is run?
Why do you think they're constantly inventing new laws? Gotta pay the kids school fees somehow. Imagine you eradicated 80% of crime overnight by decriminalising drugs. How are they going to pay for riding lessons now?
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Am currently on pg 33, this all makes sense so far and it's not often you see sense on this subject.
It usually consists of a Blue Rinse Brigade, having a 'wee tipple' with No 5, lecturing on the terrible evils, misery and crime of drugs and demanding that it is made more illegal. Not realizing that it being illegal causes the evils, misery and crime in the first place.
This is no 'chicken and egg'.
Prohibition is a proven duffer!!!
I think it would be advisable here for MSP's to seriously consider the advice of their experts and perhaps, unlike others, follow it :)
Regulate, eliminate the crime, and so reduce the harm and cost.
There's even potential here for a self funding system.
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mankind has always employed mood altering substances. these substances should be manufactured with possibly fail-systems built in. (take too much, your stomach empties itself.) i would certainly enjoy the equivalent of a couple puffs of opium after a hard days work. why should this make me a criminal?
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From 1991 to 2004 Singapore has ''hanged to death'' approximately 340 drug users, dealers and smugglers.
Singapore is considered to be the safest country in the world.
Scotland spends £50,000 per year on each drug user on rehabilitation.
As a 40% income tax contributor I prefer the first option.
Obviously capital punishment is not an option for this country, firstly it's illegal, secondly, it works.
Wansanshoo.
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#6 Brigadier John
'' Im off to look for intelligent life in the crevices of an artexed wall''
'' There is no debate to be had with fundementalist zealots''
Your latest post actively encourages suggestions, yet your history suggests otherwise, what, if any, is it to be?
Wansanshoo.
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With regard to the legalisation and taxation of cannabis; would this actually stop the drug dealers and/or make money for the treasury.
As the taxation would no doubt be punitive - it would have to be, or all us smokers would be mighty miffed! - the drug would still remain being peddled by dealers at less than the 'legal' price, in a manner that would make contraband tobacco look like sweeties!
As such - it would probably be offered as an add on to whatever hard drugs are being sold, and ergo, the problem is not solved, it just moves up a notch!
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It is simply not true that "prohibitation does not work" .The Law (Thank God) prohibits us from doing many things which would be bad for Society and for most of us, most of the time,this works.
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In some cases, WebPendragon, but self-evidently not with regards to drugs...
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#8 #15 #19 Talk sense.
Drugs, especially hard drugs such as heroin, are a blight on our communities. They are far more destructive than alcohol and tobacco which the more liberal seem to be comparing them to.
The more liberal posters who say prohibition has never helped anyone would do well to look at the coutnries where drugs are not a big problem like Sweden and Singapore already mentioned here.
I'm not really in favour of corporal punishment but treating drugs as a serious blight on society and really punishing the drug dealers and users should not be seen as a bad solution.
I offer two solutions
1. Money to clear our prisons of drugs and punish drug dealers and takers with long prison sentences.
2. Have communities with a bit of love in them. People to take care of those who's lives ar eblighted by drugs and to keep them clean and get them rehabilitated.
As much as 2. would be the best solution I fear the problem is so large that there isn't enough money or caring people to fix the problem this way.
1. would be much easier, and much cheaper to implement.
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Wansanshoe: And the point of your question is? I hope I can continue to make, or encourage, intelligent debate on serious non-party issues, while reserving the right to lambast the wilder elements of nationalism on their independence fantasies.
There seems to be a split in this blog between those advocating draconian anti-drug measures and those who favour a longer, slower fightback.
The first option seems a little bit too fascist for me ("I'm doing it for my country") while the second is possibly too limply socialist ("I'm doing it for the individual citizen"). There must be something in between.
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Examples from Singapore;
"Males with long hair will be attended to last.
Long Hair is
Hair falling across the forehead and touching the eyebrows
or
Hair covering the ears
or
Hair reaching below an ordinary shirt collar"
You may get the jail for chewing gum in Singapore.
If you take drugs in Singapore then you wouldn't need to wait for the drugs to kill you, it would be done by the state. This is extreme!
What a good idea, lets introduce draconian Singapore law in Scotland???
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Throwing good money after bad is not an option for me. Prison reform can be acheived by changing the liberal laws that apply within these establishments, money is not required, the political will to implement the neccessary changes is what is needed.
Three meals a day, access to a gym, mobile telephones, i pods, drugs, regular family visits. Is it any wonder prohibition on drugs doesn't work.
Prohibition in conjunction with capital punishment does of course work, the evidence is irrefutable.
Wansanshoo
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Alcohol (No 5), caffeine, nicotine, aspirin, etc are drugs!!!
Try telling me you have never tried one of those?
Hypocrites;
Do you think you deserve to die for this???
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We've troops in Afghanistan now. Harvest the poppies, make heroin, bring i back here and give it to the junkies.
Result, no more afghan farmers supporting the taliban as the taliban let them grow poppies and nato doesn't, no heroin drug distribution network with tentacles from the middle east to the uk, no dealers turning estates into war-zones, no addicts climbing through my kitchen window to steal the microwave. Add on some education to tell people it's a waste of their lives and hopefully for at least one drug we can bring it under control.
That's not unthinkable, the situation we have the moment is.
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Wanshansoo obviously has no idea as to the cost of appeals in a capital punishment case which in a democracy ends up costing the state millions as opposed to thousands paying for jail time.
The evidence is irrefutable.
Just google on in.
Education is the key, never prohibition.
Prohibition just creates black markets and the harsher the regime the greater the profits realised by criminals and the greater the steps they take to preserve their markets. Say hello to corruption and bribary which is de riguoer in many countries where top officials cash in on drug trading whilst low level mules get punished to retain a veneer of legality.
Some folk have no idea.
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Plenty of virtually inaccessible nice little uninhabited islands off the Scottish coast....what a great place to send people,they could get the old deserted crofts going again,grow vegetables,farm and fish maybe even in time learn some skills such as weaving.The guys would be prisoners in a sense,but free in another...free of the filthy chemicals that have destroyed their lives and free of the filthy people and environments that have encouraged them to so do. Maybe they would learn self respect and rediscover their humanity.
And all of this would cost a fraction of the sums being spent uselessly to wean them off chemicals booze and the concomitant useless destructive lifestyles.
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I think the report makes sense. So, for once, let's follow the advice of the experts and see what happens. It can't get much worse now, can it?
And prohibition wouldn't work in this context, not with a product that can be so readily smuggled in today's globalised world. If it was the 10th century and you had to smuggle it in via the silk road, then maybe, but today you have a choice of lightly guarded coast or border, from Europe's East to the Iberian Atlantic coasts. If we can't keep smugglers from trafficking whole, live (in most cases) humans, then we haven't a hope in hell to stop the smuggling of drugs. so pulling the rug from under the feet of the illegal drug trade makes perfect sense.
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# 18 WebPendragon wrote
It is simply not true that "prohibitition does not work" .The Law (Thank God) prohibits us from doing many things which would be bad for Society and for most of us, most of the time,this works.
The law prohibits us from doing many things most of us wouldn't do anyway. Would you murder your neighbour if it weren't illegal? Of course not.
The elephant in this room is alcohol - the drug which causes more deaths, more crime, and more social misery in Scotland than all others put together. But at least, because alcohol is legal, very little dangerously contaminated alcohol is on the market. Very few people are drinking - and dying of - wood alcohol, or wine fortified with anti-freeze.
Making hard drugs legal - and allowing people to use them under controlled conditions - would not, of course, automatically reduce the rates of consumption. But it would at least mean that the drugs were pure and unadulterated, and that needles were sterile. A great deal of the health problems experienced by drug users are the consequence of adulterated product and insanitary injection practices.
According to an Aberdeen University report, aproximately one person in three in Aberdeenshire smokes, and one person in four smokes cannabis. Prohibition has failed - it would be impossible to make drugs more widely and freely available in Scotland than they are now.
And I humbly suggest to Annabel Goldie that the watchword should be: 'if at first you don't succeed, try something different.
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Two points only, Im delighted that the Brigadier is learning he has to share this blog with others.
#26 davser, why would someone caught red handed with drugs deserve an appeal, they are fully aware of the punishment prior to committing this crime, and my evidence is simple, not a single one of the 340 drug criminals executed have committed a single crime since, is that evidence enough?
The problem with this capital punishment is that it works, all the time, every time.
Wansanshoo
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Well if that's the attitude why not declare "ALL DRUGS ILLEGAL" Hang the lot!
Would you still be alive!
Ever had a cup of tea?
Get those tea junkies off the street, they stink of leaf's and destroy their neighbourhoods in search of those horrible little brown bags, heh and you should see what they do to take it...... urgggg!
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Yes Brian; definitely a matter worthy for debate.
However; to borrow a quote: "if you think the problem is bad now, just wait until they've solved it" - Arthur Kasspe - .
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Also; to lend a quote "if you think the problem is bad now, just wait until they've not solved it" -rog_rocks-.
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