EVERY DRUG ADDICT COSTS SCOTS UKP50K TO LOOK AFTER, MSPS TOLD

DRUG addicts cost Scotland a shocking UKP50,000 each every year, it
was claimed yesterday.

Community Safety Minister Fergus Ewing said the bill in policing,
social work and medical care for the country's estimated 50,000-plus
addicts was UKP2.6billion a year.

Ewing revealed the figures to MSPs as he launched a new strategy to
tackle the blight of drugs.

The Scottish government have earmarked UKP94million over the next
three years for the campaign, which aims to shift the emphasis from
just treating addicts to getting them into recovery and drug-free.

Every parent in Scotland is to be sent a pamphlet warning of the
dangers of drugs and detailing the tell-tale signs to look out for.

He said: "It is difficult to measure the precise impact that
prevention efforts, education and information campaigns have.

"Scientifically, it is not really possible to do that. But let me
make one simple example. The cost to society of one drug addict in
Scotland a year with a problematic habit is UKP50,000.

"Over 10 years, that person will cost Scotland half a million pounds.
That is more than the exercise of providing every family in Scotland
with this booklet.

"This booklet does provide information to parents which I believe
they will not have.

"If that helps 10 or 100 parents address earlier the problems that
they see in their son or daughter, who is starting to get into the
grips of addiction, then the cost will be paid many times over."

Ewing said there would still be a role for the heroin substitute
methadone but there had to be an improvement in moving people on to
recovery rather than leaving them "parked on methadone."

He also said the law would be changed to compel drug dealers to prove
they acquired their assets legally, rather than the onus being on the
Crown to prove otherwise before assets are confiscated.

But Labour justice spokeswoman Pauline McNeill complained there was
no mention of a Drugs Commission as promised by the SNP.

And she said the government had not explained why they had not met
the proposed 20 per cent increase in the anti-drugs budget.