Drugs. What is the reality?

The Scottish Government Strategy The Road to Recovery has a good compendium of headline figures on the problems that drug use causes in Scotland. That report notes: "Scotland has a long-standing and serious drug problem...the scale of the problem is unacceptably high. It is a significant driver of economic underperformance, crime, risk to children and health inequalitites." The impact of the misuse of drugs is not merely on the user. It has a huge impact on family life, particularly on children and on the wider community of the drug user through both anti-social behaviour and criminality.

Having recognised the size of the problem and the relative inneffectiveness of the various approaches to the problem, the Scottish Government outlined what it saw as a new approach."Central to the strategy is a new approach to tackling drug use based on the concept of recovery. Recovery is a process through which an individual is enabled to move on from their problem drug use towards a drug-free life and become an active and contributing member of society". The separation between the two conflicting approaches of abstinence and harm reduction is dismissed as a false dichotomy with the true goal being recovery. That requires the whole of people's lives to be addressed and not merely their drug use in isolation.



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