Drugs toll demands new solutions

IT MAY have been only a snapshot, but there was enough information within it to paint a bleak and disturbing picture of the grim reality of daily life as a drug abuser in Scotland.

According to the Scottish Drug Misuse Database, which produces a profile of people who misuse illicit substances based on information they provide when seeking treatment, drug use begins early for many and leads to high unemployment and a reliance on benefits and crime to feed habits.

The figures are truly shocking. More than 100 youngsters aged under 15 are problem drug users. More than 800 new drug users seeking help were aged between 15 and 19. No less than 42 per cent of the 11,955 users that sought treatment had children under the age of 16.

Coming as they do just days after Professor Neil McKeganey revealed in this newspaper that it costs the state 60,000 a year to treat a single addict, yesterday's figures provide further proof of the huge social problems associated with drugs.

It is, however, easy to cite the statistics and be horrified at the damage that drugs are doing to our society. It is harder is to suggest what might be done, though Prof McKeganey's advocacy of abstinence, not containment, has merit.

Beyond that we have to take at least two further steps. First, to find a way of detaching the supply and use of drugs from criminality and, second, using money, rather than military force, to persuade poor farmers in places such as Afghanistan to give up drug cultivation.