ADDICTS FACING BAN ON HAVING CHILDREN

Drug addicts could be barred from having children or face having them
taken into care until they have beaten their habit, under a plan
being considered by the Labour Party in Scotland ahead of next year's
Holyrood elections.

Duncan McNeil, the senior Labour back bencher, has drawn up a paper
which includes the plan, based on a similar scheme in the US, which
involves women addicts being given cash to take long-term contraceptives.

The Herald revealed proposals from the same MSP in May that
contraception should be added to methadone to prevent addicts conceiving.

Mr McNeil said addicts would be asked to sign a "social contract",
banning them from having children until they have beaten their habit.
Once the paper is signed, the addicts would get benefits, methadone,
and housing.

If the contract is breached, and the addict goes on to have a family,
the social contract would be withdrawn. They would also face having
their children taken into care.

The paper will feed into Labour's manifesto preparations before next
year's elections. "Having a family while you are coming off drugs or
on a drug rehabilitation programme is absolutely mad," said Mr
McNeil. "We should be using every means possible to dissuade people
(in this situation) from starting a family."

But his comments have caused controversy among drugs experts and
fellow politicians, who say the plan is both unworkable and unethical.

In a letter to The Herald today, Graeme McArthur, of the Scottish
Drugs Forum, says: "These proposals smack of cynical expediency and a
depressing lack of vision. What's more, they conveniently overlook
the role of poverty, lack of employment and other strategic issues
far removed from the sphere of influence of the average drug user -
yet which create the bleak environment and conditions which encourage
drug problems to proliferate."

The SNP's deputy justice spokesman Stewart Stevenson also criticised
the plans. He said: "It is not only desperate but unworkable. Addicts
live chaotic lives and would be likely to sign anything if they
thought it would get them the help they wish for."