Analysis: Getting lost on the road to recovery

SCOTLAND announced its ambitious “Road to Recovery” drug strategy in 2008.That strategy placed unparalleled emphasis on ensuring that drug users in treatment were being helped to become drug free.

Yesterday, the Scottish Government released the latest statistics with which to judge the success of its drug strategy. Sadly there is little in that report which suggests that Scotland is about to lose its position as the country with one of the largest drug problems in the world.

If there is one marker of the success of the Scottish drug strategy that we ought now to be seeing it must surely be a reduction in Scotland’s national methadone programme.

But the statistics reveal a 10 per cent increase in methadone prescriptions and a 30 per cent increase in the cost of what is now a £28 million a year programme.

It would have been unrealistic to see a massive reduction but to see an increase in a period covered by a drug strategy with a focus on recovery and abstinence is disappointing.

There is good news within the statistics, though, in a reduction at last in the number of addict deaths.

• Neil McKeganey is director of the Centre for Drug Misuse Research