Mev Brown: Getting hooked on 'zero tolerance' is wrong

Published on Wednesday 15 April 2009 09:29

WHAT does "zero tolerance" really mean? The three recent deaths at the Leith Street hostel occurred in accommodation operating a "zero tolerance" drugs policy, where residents caught abusing illegal substances face eviction.

And then what? The council still has a duty to house the now homeless addict, so he or she will most likely move to a B&B, where untrained staff will be less likely to catch the addict a second time. If they did, the council will move the addict on again.

A "zero tolerance" drugs policy is flawed on two counts. Firstly, it is legal to be under the influence of illegal substances – it is only illegal to be caught in possession them. Secondly, the state is the biggest supplier of class A drugs in the UK.

In Scotland, the NHS supplies around 30 per cent of the opiate market by way of methadone – a class A drug – and there are economic arguments for this.

The standard street trade is the "tenner" (10) bag, which contains around 0.1 grams of heroin. For addicts moving to the methadone programme, the rough ratio is 100ml of methadone per gram of heroin, i.e. 100 of street drugs, is being "treated" with around 100ml of methadone per day.

Given that the NHS ships around 300,000 litres of methadone a year, methadone is substituting around 300 million of street drugs a year. If we say stolen goods sell on the streets for 25 per cent of their ticket value, this equates to 300,000 litres of state-supplied methadone, cutting 1.2 billion off Scotland's crime figures. The cost of Scotland's methadone programme is around 15m – excellent value for money.

But the approximate 70 per cent of the opiate market the state doesn't supply will cost the Scottish public around 2.8bn in stolen goods. Because this policy maintains addiction, a rising number of drug addicts now cost us an estimated extra 2.6bn in benefits, NHS, social work and the criminal justice system. So we need to get serious about having a zero tolerance policy.

Mev Brown works with the homeless in Edinburgh and is seeking nomination with the Jury Team for the European elections