Leader comment: Drugs in prison

With an estimated 50,000 heroin addicts in this country - not to mention 22,000 dependent on methadone - there is no hiding the growing toll which drug abuse is inflicting on society. Common sense dictates this will have a significant impact on the prison population.

Successive governments have failed to make inroads in tackling the problem, despite some significant efforts in recent years.

We are still a long, long way from achieving the Scottish Government's laudable target of drugs addicts receiving help and treatment within three weeks by the year 2013.

Instead, growing numbers of addicts are "parked" on methadone, their dangerous lifestyles to some degree controlled, rather than cured.

This same policy of containment seems to be at the heart of the prisons' approach to addicts.

Only a fraction of those entering prison are tested for drugs on arrival and even when they leave as many as 28 per cent are found to have been using illegal substances.

A harsher regime would present its own problems in terms of mantaining manageable relationships between prisoners and warders, but the results of sticking with the status quo are already clear.

We know what it has delivered - a doubling of drug-related deaths in the last decade in Scotland to more than 570 a year.

Flood of donations

The plight of former soldier Tom Glizean, who was threatened with legal action by the city council for collecting for charity on the Royal Mile, was an embarassment to Edinburgh.

The 90-year-old who has collected more than 35,000 for charities including the Sick Kids, deserves the city's highest praise rather than hassle.

The only saving grace is that common sense has belatedly prevailed and Mr Gilzean has now been told by the city authorities that he can carry on collecting after all.

Better late than never is all that can be said to that.