Addiction Recovery and Drugs

Statistics released by Holyrood on 17 March 2026 show that 1,146 people were suspected to have died from drugs. This figure is up from 1,065 during the previous year.

1. We support the concept of a "Right to Addiction Recovery Bill" along the lines introduced by Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross. This would guarantee a legal right to addiction treatment, including residential rehabilitation, for people struggling with drug or alcohol abuse. It would prevent such care being refused. Ross's bill fell in October 2025, after being opposed by the SNP and the Scottish Green Party.

2. We advocate closing the so-called "Safe Consumption Room", The Thistle, with immediate effect. There is NO safe way to consume class A drugs. Money saved could be used to fund rehab and recovery places, and earlier intervention. Safe consumption rooms are a late-stage intervention.

3. Emphasise detoxification, not "assisted intoxication". We agree with a letter writer in The National (10-4-26), "a physician involved in drug and alcohol recovery for 40 years, and in my own case in my 32nd year of abstinence", who stated:

Harm reduction when it comes to fatal substance abuse is a contradiction in terms.       

                The normalisation by the state and civic community of self-injection of intravenous poisons in a cafe culture environment with health professionals in attendance is on a hiding – and I mean a hiding – to nothing but more deaths.

                There is only one safe gold-standard intervention in turning a person's path from the grave and the hell that precedes it. That is repeated supported attempts at detoxification, not "assisted intoxication".

                The money and energy used to provide facilities like The Thistle and mobile intoxication services could be used to provide a network of short-stay, medically supervised opiate withdrawal rooms with essential volunteers and helpers from the growing recovery community of experts from experience. There should be no limit to the amount of attempts, and these life units should be made widely and immediately available with a no-frills, low-cost ethos embedded from the start.

                All elements of the community should have a connection, and politicians need to attend regularly to receive education…The illusory belief in a broad menu of "expert" services other than abstinence is an increasingly old and fatal refrain. It is literally a death march.

4. Swap out the widely-prescribed and deadly methadone, for cannabis grown on license for NHS Scotland.

5. We support the 7 Key Recommendations in the May 2024 report from the Salvation Army entitled "Breaking The Cycle". These are verbatim below, from their website: salvationarmy.org.uk/homelessness-policy/breaking-cycle

i. All local authorities in Scotland to analyse the cause of death of any individual who dies while in temporary accommodation arranged by the council or a Housing First tenancy. This information should be promptly reviewed in order to identify any trends in need of action by the local authority.

ii. Cities and regions with high levels of rough sleeping should introduce a similar recording system of the rough sleeping population as used in London (CHAIN).

iii. Government, councils and Health & Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs) to work together to ensure there is drug, alcohol and mental health support available evenings and weekends in all local authority areas.

iv. Drug and alcohol policy should be treated predominantly as a public health issue.

v. People housed in temporary accommodation to be prioritised in receiving specialist support for substance use and mental health.

vi. People in Housing First tenancies to be prioritised in receiving specialist support for substance use and mental health.

vii. No individual, especially if they are experiencing homelessness, should be denied mental health support on the basis that they are using drugs or consuming alcohol.

6. Heroin is a plague on our streets. We should go after the dealers, cut the supply, and impose 30-year minimum sentences for anyone caught selling it.