Syringe strewing publicity stunt might have opposite effect - John McLellan

Plastic syringes were scattered at the entrance to Edinburgh City Chambers

With High Street businesses complaining about the blight of gangs of drug addicts, the publicity stunt of strewing the steps of the City Chambers with syringes to persuade the council to open a safe consumption room might have the opposite effect.

Presumably it was meant to show that legal “shooting galleries” would prevent syringes being discarded in parks and playgrounds as they so often are now, but it also illustrated what a scourge hard drugs are for so many people and communities and that more needs doing to break addictions than just helping addicts stay hooked.

Whether taken in controlled circumstances or in some kind of Trainspotting slum, the reality of a life of dependency is one in which consumption, be it drugs or alcohol, always comes first, and those campaigners would be better spending their energies to demand better rehab facilities.

There is no question that one drug death every three days in Edinburgh is a matter of shame, but the claim that consumption rooms would “completely curb drug deaths” is spurious to say the least, as new research shows that while such facilities do reduce deaths, they do not prevent them.

There are no consumption rooms in England, but drug deaths are three times lower than in Scotland. The Scottish Government, whose responsibility this is, stubbornly fails to explain why or to back the Scottish Conservatives’ Right to Rehab Bill, presumably because of the party behind it. Maybe campaigners should strew the steps of Bute House with death certificates to get meaningful action.