SCOTLAND NOT READY FOR THINK-TANK'S RADICAL SOLUTION TO NATION'S DRUG PROBLEM

A THINK-TANK yesterday called for shooting galleries for addicts and
heroin on prescription.

The Scottish Futures Forum, who have spent a year looking for
solutions to Scotland's drugs and alcohol problem, also urged the
regulation and taxation of cannabis.

But the forum's project panel chairman, former education chief Frank
Pignatelli, admitted: "I don't think the public are ready for it."

And the Scottish government and opposition parties were quick to
reject the call for drug consumption rooms - otherwise known as
shooting galleries.

A government spokesman said: "There are complex legal and ethical
issues around consumption rooms that cannot be easily resolved.

"We are, however, taking the issue of drug-related deaths very
seriously - for example, we are creating a new drug deaths database
to help make interventions at a local level more effective."

He said the Scottish government were closely monitoring new
approaches to heroin prescription being piloted in England to see
what lessons can be learned.

He added: "Generally, we welcome the report as a contribution to
discussion of these important issues, and will be reflecting further
on its proposals."

Labour's justice spokeswoman Pauline McNeill said: "I am not in
favour of heroin prescription or shooting galleries. The evidence for
either approach being effective is very slim.

"The report highlights a number of areas and I will be examining the
report in detail."

Tory leader Annabel Goldie branded the forum's conclusions "the ideas
of the last two decades".

Goldie added: "The new national drugs strategy for Scotland which
received the unanimous backing of the Scottish parliament last week
demonstrates there is a new political will in Scotland.

"The days of merely relying on managing the drugs crisis, rather than
finding solutions to it, have passed."

But Lib Dem justice spokeswoman Margaret Smith said the report was
"thought-provoking". She said: "It is entirely reasonable for the
government to investigate different and sometimes radical approaches
that have been pioneered successfully abroad.

"Drugs misuse is a global problem and, if other countries have
developed new and radical solutions, then it is sensible to consider
them for use in Scotland."

The aim of the package of measures suggested by the Futures Forum was
to halve the damage caused by drugs and alcohol by 2025.

The report claims drug consumption rooms would help tackle the high
levels of drug deaths and hepatitis C in Scotland.

There were 421 drug-related deaths in Scotland in 2006, the highest
rate in Europe.

Pignatelli said strong evidence might convince the public over the
measures the forum had suggested.

He added: "When everything else has failed, when no one knows how to
solve this health problem, under very controlled conditions, we
should possibly be thinking, 'Why not experiment as other countries
have with this controlled environment where there are health
professionals on site?'"

The option of prescription heroin follows a scheme in the Netherlands
where addicts who had resisted all attempts to wean them off drugs
were given an option of a medication that could be injected and one
that could be smoked.

In both cases, the results were around 25 per cent better than those
who used methadone.

The report also states: "In future, cannabis may be taxed tightly and
regulated as part of that wider regulatory framework, if this is
shown to reduce drugs availability and harm."

It cited the difference between liberal policy in Amsterdam with its
cannabis cafes and the restrictive policy in San Francisco.

The report warned buyers were three times more likely to be being
offered hard drugs in San Francisco than when buying cannabis legally
in Amsterdam.

The panel's vice-chairman Tom Woods, a former senior police officer,
said yesterday that to beat drugs it may be necessary to "go to
uncomfortable places".

He said: "Sometimes, the evidence takes us to uncomfortable places,
places that challenge our prejudices and challenge our morality.

"I think we have to visit some of these places and look at the
evidence and look and see what actually works, rather than follow our
hand-knitted ideas of what's right and what's wrong.

"Let's not forget where we are now.

"Where we are now is living in a country where there is one of the
highest prevalences of drugs.

"We're living in a country where we have the highest drug death rate,
we're living in a country which has one of the highest hep Crates in Europe.

"A lot of the things we've done in the past clearly have not worked."

The report calls for alcohol and drugs to be seen as more a health
and social issue than a justice one and warns that sending people to
prison for low-level alcohol and drug-related crime is "unproductive
and probably unsustainable".

It says the Scottish government and local licensing boards should
seek to end irresponsible alcohol promotions.

A narrowing of inequalities in Scotland should also be a major plank
of alcohol and drug damage prevention policy, the panel said.

And major investment in early years education was seen as "vital" to
preventing new generations of addicts.

A Scottish parliament spokesman said last night that the cost of the
project was UKP85,000.

The Futures Forum was the brainchild of former Holyrood presiding
officer George Reid.

Its aim is to extend the parliament's outreach work to academia, the
arts, blue chip companies, civic Scotland and entrepreneurs and to
look beyond the normal four-year electoral policy cycle at the
challenges facing the nation.