Drug advisory body yet to meet – a year after strategy switch

Published on Sunday 5 April 2009 22:18

SCOTLAND'S community safety minister, Fergus Ewing, has come under fire for failing to meet with his own team of drugs advisers since launching the SNP's flagship anti-drugs strategy nearly a year ago.

Mr Ewing chairs the Scottish Advisory Committee on Drug Misuse (SACDM) –but The Scotsman can reveal the body has not met once since a radical drive was announced in May to slash the number of addicts, estimated to be about 52,000, and reduce the 2.6 billion cost of drug abuse to Scotland.

The committee's remit is to advise Scottish ministers on the development of the national strategy for tackling drug misuse and the future direction and priorities of the strategy.

It was also tasked with providing an early warning system to ministers about emerging drugs issues.The committee was initially set up in the mid-1990s and as recently as 2007 was meeting every three months.

Under the SNP's drugs strategy, the focus of treatment will shift from the "management" of addicts to a programme designed to make more of them drug-free.

Last week, an Audit Scotland report said Scotland had one of the highest rates of drug abuse in Europe – and that ministers had failed to ensure effective treatment and prevention services amid a lack of clear direction and co-ordination.

And on Tuesday new figures showed addicts are having to wait more than a year to receive treatment.

The following day, Mr Ewing told MSPs he was taking a number of steps to implement the drugs strategy. They include a "new framework" for local action to tackle drug misuse.

But Professor Neil McKeganey, director of the Centre for Drugs Misuse Research at Glasgow University, said he was "surprised" that the SACDM has not met since the new strategy was launched.

"Government ministers need to have ready access to well informed independent advice and that is ideally what SACDM should be providing."

Prof McKeganey is not a member of SACDM but sits on one of its sub-groups.

He called for the creation of an independent advisory body on drugs in Scotland which reports to ministers but which is not under their direct control – similar to the Home Office's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.

Bill Aitken, Tory justice spokesman, also hit out at what he regarded as a lack of consultation.

"We need to get things going and I find it surprising that there has not been a meeting of this strategy group in all this time."

A Scottish Government spokesman said: "Ministers and policy officials are in regular contact with a range of experts, including those who sit on the Scottish Advisory Committee on Drugs Misuse.

"In fact, the SACDM sub-group, the National Drug Evidence Group, has met twice, in September and January, and will meet again next month."