Scotsman Letters: Hard questions must be asked over decriminalising drugs

A junior SNP minister is tasked with revealing just after Holyrood has closed for the summer that the SNP regime wants Westminster to decriminalise all drugs for personal use.

The mortality rate from drug use in Scotland is over three times that of the rate in the rest of the UK

This means that it would not be a criminal offence to possess heroin or cocaine – highly dangerous drugs. Elena Whitham, the minister, had clearly forgotten that, in 2021, the Lord Advocate had effectively decriminalised these drugs by deciding that those caught in possession of Class A drugs in Scotland could be given a police warning instead of criminal charges.​

There are hard questions to be asked about this issue. First, why is the mortality rate from drug use in Scotland over three times that of the rate in the rest of the UK? Could it have anything to do with the slashing of the number of rehabilitation beds in Scotland from 352 in 2007 to 70 a decade later? Or to a 22 per cent fall in funding in the year 2015-16 for support services to addicts? These are SNP policies and nothing to do with allegedly wicked Westminster.

​Second, to those who say “legalise drugs, put their sale under state control and tax them, like tobacco and alcohol”, I’d ask what would happen when the current dealers – who would scarcely be deterred by this – simply undercut the legal state prices? Perhaps there needs to be a strategy for coming down hard on the dealers.

Simply legalising drug use is pretty much throwing in the towel. More than that, it is being used by the SNP as another stick with which to beat Westminster. So I ask again: why, under a uniform regime throughout the UK, is the drug problem so much worse in Scotland than elsewhere?

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh

Cluster bombs

The daily narrative that the war is going swimmingly for Ukraine has been undermined by the indefensible decision of our American allies to give cluster bombs to Ukraine. It stems from their frustration at the stalemate in the war.

Cluster bombs are indefensible – the US has given up the moral high ground, and was this even run past their European allies, given we are all signatories to the Convention On Cluster Munitions?

That convention was significant, as some prominent UK banks had been financing the companies producing them.

The bomb releases small droplets over a wide area and kills and maims civilians years after a conflict ends, as the Vietnam experience proved

The UK and EU should, instead, be pushing for the opening of peace talks as proposed by President Xi of China. President Erdogan has offered to host them in Turkey.The 12-point peace plan, which has had such little publicity here, unlike across Europe, entailed a ceasefire, the withdrawal of Russian forces, a UN-run plebiscite in Donetsk and Luhansk; an end to Western sanctions, protection of nuclear power plants etc.

The reality is Ukraine cannot defeat a nuclear super-power and, conventionally, is hopelessly outnumbered in tanks, artillery, aircraft and personnel.

John V Lloyd, Inverkeithing, Fife

Toxic Westminster

I found myself nodding in ferocious agreement with Mhairi Black and Stephen Flynn's recent assessment of Westminster as toxic. I made my first visit to the UK Parliament just two weeks ago, and I found a certain negative energy permeating throughout the place.

Most obviously, the building itself is not fit for purpose; the host of the event I was there started the session by telling us to “run for our lives” should the fire alarm go off!

But more importantly, one need not stay there long to tell its culture is also toxic. Every toilet is adorned with posters for the Independent Grievance and Complaints Service, promising readers there will be no personal consequences should they complain. It is a damning indictment of the so-called 'Mother of Parliaments' that there is clearly no confidence in the scheme in Westminster, given recent reports.

Michael Heffernan, Wishaw, North Lanarkshire

Less majesty

Duncan McAra (Letters, July 7) is correct when he states that The Treason Felony Act 1848 is still on the statute book. What he fails to mention is that, like many out of date and redundant acts of the Westminster parliament, most of its provisions have been repealed as no longer appropriate to the modern era.

The tattered remnants of the 1848 act were the subject of a Lords appeal in 2003 where in a unanimous ruling the judges agreed that the Act which appears to criminalise the advocacy of republicanism is a relic of a bygone age and does not fit into the fabric of a modern legal system. The idea that section 3 could survive scrutiny under the Human Rights Act is unreal.

In Scotland, where the people are sovereign and the monarch is but the first among equals, the pretension that the King, a government or a parliament is sovereign over the people has always been not just an alien idea, but unlawful.

In fact it got King James VII and II deposed! The people of Scotland exercised their sovereign power over their monarch.

There is a significant shift in mood in Scotland, typified by the protesters outside St Giles Cathedral last Wednesday, a voluble expression of the desire for less majesty and more liberty, equality and fraternity.

John Brown, Edinburgh

EV battery shocker

Research into low frequency electromagnetic radiation in EVs has concluded that there are no health issues involved. I wonder at this, given that the research was sponsored by the manufacturers.

Over 20 years ago I had a car with the starter battery under the driver's seat. My heart rate monitor wouldn't work. The maker said it was common, depending on the location of the car battery, for the signal from your heart to the monitor to be interrupted by electromagnetic radiation from the battery. If this is what happens with a small starter battery I wonder what the health effects could be caused by sitting on top of a huge EV battery?

William Loneskie, Lauder, Berwickshire

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