I have a business is a debate on motion 11695, in the name of Aileen Campbell, on safe injection facilities. I would invite all members to press their request to speak buttons if they wish to contribute to the debate, and I call on Aileen Campbell. In 2016, 867 individuals lost their lives, with countless others devastated by the impact of problem substance use. Alongside that loss of life problem substance use can inflict pain, trauma and suffering on individuals, families and communities right across the country. At a time where we are currently updating our national drug strategy, taking into account the changes that have happened in the last 10 years, we have a chance to review and improve the services that we offer to people and the methods in which we engage with them and support them. Since coming into this post, the rising number of drug-related deaths has weighed heavily on me, and I am very aware, given the nature of the population that we are talking about, and I lie to the challenges of austerity, that this pain will remain in Scottish society for some time. Each number represents an individual loss of life, potential, unfulfilled and a family devastated by grief. We cannot tolerate that, and therefore we need to examine what we are currently doing to help and support some of the most vulnerable people in our society and consider what we can do differently, even if it is unpopular or uncomfortable. Sadly, we are not alone in facing this challenge, with other countries also needing to find ways to cope with problem substance use. However, the treatment and harm reduction approach has taken very, very, as do the results, so it makes sense to further explore those where the evidence suggests that they can make a positive difference. I have recently returned from Australia, where I was supporting our fantastic sportsmen and women at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, but Australia, like Scotland, has also seen recent increases in the number of drug-related deaths. Between 2012 and 2016, heroin-related deaths in Melbourne and Victoria doubled, and in an effort to seek a solution, the Victorian state government looked to the successes that were seen in Sydney, where it had introduced a safer drug consumption facility, SDCF, in 2001. In the 16 years since the Sydney SDCF has been open, it has had over 1 million visits from individuals seeking to use their facility. During that time, it has treated over 7,000 overdoses, but without one single death. It has also recorded an 80 per cent reduction in the number of ambulance call-outs to the area. The number of used needles and syringes that are discarded in the public has halved, and nearly 80 per cent of local residents say that they are supportive of the facility. Now, I have spoken with some of the officials from the Victorian state government about their recent decision to approve an SDCF in the North Richmond neighbourhood of Melbourne. Like ourselves, Victoria has chosen to treat the problems associated with substance use as a health issue rather than a justice one, and that means taking a health-led response to this situation. For the Victorians, that meant looking at the evidence for what works and what would reduce the number of deaths, and they did not have to look far to see the impact that an SDCF could have. Closer to home, and just before I left for Australia, I addressed the Dundee Community Forum as it launched a drugs commission to explore the problems that it faces around the problem of substance use amid a growing number of drug-related deaths and to look for potential solutions. That forum explained to me that those solutions might initially seem controversial or unpopular, but we ought to those families who have lost loved ones and to those who have lost their lives to try something different as the status quo for those furthest away from services is not working. I am well aware that the idea of an SDCF for some is unpalatable and that the idea of offering a safe space for individuals to consume drugs seems wrong, but I am clear and this government is clear that our vision for the country is one where all of our treatment and rehabilitation services are based on the principle of recovery and indeed that commitment lay at the heart of our 2008 publication, The Road to Recovery. However, for some people, that possibility of recovery or absence is a long way off. In the meantime, it is important that we focus on keeping them alive and in touch with those services that may provide them with the support that they require to eventually take those further steps towards their own recovery. I thank the minister very much for giving way. I agree really with all she says on the health aspect but she has not touched so far on the supply aspect. It seems to me that the model is built on people buying and selling drugs illegally and is linked to organised crime. That is my main reservation about the policy that we are building crime into the system. I would not agree with that assessment. That is about taking a public health approach to a public health issue. We do not currently have the powers to enable that to happen in a legal sense. That is why I am looking and seeking the agreement of Parliament to enable us to ask the UK Government to give us the opportunity to take a public health response to the public health need that is in the city that he represents. That is precisely the function that an SDCF can offer, a place where individuals can go, a safe space where they can be treated with respect but also a place where they can build a relationship with treatment workers, so that if and when they decide that they want to make a change to turn their lives around, they will have the support on hand to do so. The provision of an SDCF would be a real shift in terms of current service provision, a service that had no barriers to engagement but allowed this highly marginalised population a place to engage with staff, build trust and get support to address some of the wider issues that they face. Following a recent Westminster debate on this topic, the UK Government Minister came under attack for misrepresenting some of the evidence behind those facilities, and I am keen not to make that same mistake. Instead, I will defer to a 2017 report from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, which summarises some of the evidence behind those facilities. That report found that the evidence for SDCFs to reach and stay in contact with those highly marginalised individuals was well documented. It mentions that that contact has resulted in immediate improvements in hygiene and safer use for clients, as well as the wider health and public order benefits, but that those facilities are associated with increased uptakes of diverse types of dependence care such as referral to an addiction treatment centre, initiation of detoxification programmes and initiation of methadone therapy. The report also stated that evaluation studies have shown that there has been a positive impact in those communities in which those facilities are placed. That is an important point in response to what John Mason asked me, including a decrease in the level of public ejecting and a reduction in the number of discarded needles in those facilities. Surely those outcomes deserve exploration to ensure that our communities feel supported? Daniel Johnson I hear much of what the minister has to say, and I thank her for giving way. There is evidence that she should look at it, but clearly, in terms of what she is saying, it is very focused on intravenous drug use. Therefore, the wider services and the wider engagement is much more beyond that cohort of intravenous drug uses in tackling the wider drug problems. Ruth Davidson That is why I am talking about this specific group. We are talking about a problem with drug-related deaths. The examples from across the world where they have taken up this opportunity to proceed with this type of facility, which has had a reduction in their drug-related deaths. However, I will not pretend that this is going to be a panacea for all the issues around drug and substance misuse in Scotland. On that, I think that I am seeking agreement for us to try and initiate some dialogue with the UK Government in which we can try and take forward a public health response to the growing and very real public health need that is felt very keenly in Glasgow. Again, taking forward this approach has been borne out by evidence from the Glucidne facility, which has had support from both the local, residential and business communities. That is due to witnessing a positive change in the area because of the success of the SDCF. The Melbourne locals are actively campaigned for a safe injecting facility, but I am aware that, for some of the arguments clearly through the interventions that I have had, the argument will be that there is no safe way to take a class A drug such as heroin. My answer to that would be that an SDCF does not claim to make drug use safe, but rather that they are based on the premise that it is safer to use drugs under supervision than to do so in a disused building or on the street or any other place where an individual might take them and not be found should anything go wrong. We have rehearsed those arguments before when setting up needle and syringe exchange programmes, again not claiming that to do so will make injecting safe, but instead making it safer by reducing the chances for the transmission of blood-borne viruses and bacterial infections. An SDCF would also provide the opportunity for individuals to access the health and social care services that are usually out of their reach. On that point, evidence from the Sydney facility shows that about 70 per cent of the people registered had never accessed any local health service before, and that, since the introduction of the SDCF, almost 12,000 referrals have been made connecting people to health and social welfare services that had never happened in the past. She is absolutely right that there is a link here between the safe injecting rooms and other healthcare facilities, but the other key services around that are the ADPs. Will the minister take this opportunity to confirm that budgets for ADPs will be protected in the future, which they have not been in the past under this Government? Fest the record levels into ADPs, and we have committed in the previous budget to invest a further £20 million to make sure that we can deliver on our new and refreshed drug approach. By looking closer to home, the UK Government's advisory council on the misuse of drugs in response to the growing number of drug-related deaths across the UK published a report in December 2016 in which it recommended that consideration be given to the establishment of SDCFs in those areas with a high concentration of injecting drug use. It reported that, in addition to SDCFs reducing the number of drug-related deaths, there was also evidence that they could reduce the transfer of blood-borne bug irises, while also improving access to primary care and more intensive forms of drug treatment. It was also clear that the evidence showed that those facilities did not result in an increase in injecting behaviour drug use or for John Mason local crime rates. All of that leaves me wondering just how much more evidence and support of those facilities does the Westminster Government require before it will act, and how many more people will need to die before they agree that those facilities could save lives. The issues that I have spoken about today affect individuals and communities all across our country. However, it is Glasgow that is leading the charge for Scotland in terms of seeking to open an SDCF. For that reason, I would like to take a moment to focus on the current situation there. The most recent statistics that I have seen indicate that the HIV epidemic in the city continues unabated. The outbreak among injectors in greater Glasgow currently involves around 120 people, and this level of HIV infection is unacceptable in our society. I am adamant that we must be able to offer some form of solution to this situation. If one in five of those who inject drugs in and around Glasgow city centre is involved in this outbreak, then a service that would allow them regular contact with services so that they can be engaged in effective HIV treatment would seem essential. In addition, Glasgow has seen the largest numbers of drug-related deaths across the country in recent years, with 170 recorded in 2016. Again, that figure is unacceptable and one that demands action. I was encouraged by Glasgow City Council's recent discussion on the issue, although, raised by SNP councillor Mary Hunter, the discussion sought agreement from members across all political parties on the need for such a facility to be introduced in Glasgow and ended with a unanimous vote to pursue the provision of an STCF in the city. There was also an invitation from a Conservative councillor to Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary to come and see the situation in Glasgow for herself, which is also collectively backed by the rest of the council. I would add my own voice to that call to the Home Secretary, or indeed to our minister with responsibility for drugs, Victoria Atkins, who I am due to meet next month to discuss the pressing and urgent issue among others relating to substance use that we are unable to act on due to the powers being reserved. My officials have been involved in the discussions with the Glasgow Health and Social Care Partnership, which have been developing the proposal from the start, and they will continue to engage with them as that progresses. I will also soon be meeting with Suzanne Miller, the chair of Glasgow's ADP, and the chief officer of the Health and Social Care Partnership to get a further update on the situation in the city. We are currently working to renew our national drug strategy. The current strategy has achieved a great deal. I wish to pay tribute to the hard work of those involved in the delivery of that strategy. The ADPs, the drug services professionals, clinicians, those with lived experience and the third sector who have introduced the world's first national naloxone programme presided over a decline in drug use amongst our young people, supported over 120 independent recovery communities and greatly reduced drug and alcohol waiting times. Neil Findlay. Shof, what you are saying in relation to injecting rooms, and rightly you are focusing on that today, but will you bring back a debate and Government time to the chamber for us to talk about the whole issue of drugs, the holistic approach that we need to take to drugs policy? I am happy always to engage. Indeed, I have sought to engage with parties across the parliamentary chamber to make sure that people feel a degree of ownership on that strategy in the way that we took forward the road to recovery. I happily engage with the member. I know that he takes a keen interest in that, and I hope that he takes that commitment in the spirit in which he is meant to ensure that we get something that delivers for the people who are marginalised and vulnerable in the here and now, while we also try to make progress with safe injecting facilities as well. However, our refreshed strategy will seek to build on those achievements in the road to recovery, but also, and importantly, recognises the gaps in the shortfalls that have become all too evident and seek to rectify them. That new strategy must be innovative in its approach, while still being guided by the evidence of what works and without being afraid to suggest approaches that might make some people uncomfortable at first. That will include ideas such as SDCFs or heroin-assisted treatment, but with the backdrop of rising drug-related deaths, those bold ideas could be what makes the difference. It is important, however, that we do not view those approaches as a panacea to all the challenges that we face with problem substance use in Scotland. Again, we welcome all members who want to contribute to the refreshed strategy. That strategy will also be backed by an additional £20 million each year for the lifetime of this Parliament. I have been clear that this money is not just to produce more of the same. Instead, I want it to encourage new thinking, new approaches and to encourage ambitious and innovative front-line responses. Unfortunately, at this time, we are curtailed to an extent in what we, as a nation, can do in response to the problems that we face from substance use. The options that are available to us in current legislation are limited. However, the existing situation in Glasgow is serious enough to warrant considering alternative approaches, including a supervised consumption room. I am pushing for a change in the legislation to let that happen. There are SDCFs in over 70 cities around the world, but not a single one in the UK. I would argue that that position is no longer tenable and I would seek the consensus and agreement of Parliament to help to change that. I call on Annie Wells to open for the Conservatives to be filled by Inas Sarwar. As an MSP for Glasgow and the party spokesperson for the Conservative Party on Public Health, I have a particular interest in the proposal to set up a safe injecting facility in Glasgow. The fact that the safe injecting facility has had so much media attention both locally and nationally just goes to show how much public interest there is on the topic. However, I fundamentally do not support the creation of such a facility, believing it to mask exactly why we have reached this crisis point in the first place. That is why I am calling for a whole-sector-led drug strategy review, as I alluded to in my amendment, and an open and honest discussion on what the drawbacks of such a facility would be. The current strategy evidently is not working. In Scotland, drug-related deaths rose by 23 per cent in 2015-16. In Glasgow, a city that we know has a long and complex history with drugs, and an HIV outbreak among drug users is now being described as a health epidemic. Growing up and still living in one of the most deprived areas of Glasgow, I know only too well what drug addiction can do, not only to the individual but also their family, friends and community. Only last year leaving my flat, I saw emergency services on my street only to find out that a former friend of mine had died because of drugs. I grew up with this guy, we played together and we were in and out of each other's houses, and I was later told by his partner that she'd tried to dissociate him having taken a cocktail of heroin and methadone. Many years ago, I lost a close friend to a drug overdose, a young woman with a child, who again I had grown up with knowing my whole life, and she was such a lovely girl. Although we had grown apart, her death and seeing the impact it had on her family has stayed with me until this very day. That is why I am so passionate that we work first and foremost in getting people off these drugs altogether. Those deaths are happening because people are falling through the net of a system that is not working. We have got to ask ourselves how we got to this position in the first place. As I stated earlier, drug-related deaths are on the rise, increasing by 23 per cent between 2015 and 2016. That, as the minister has alluded to, is 867 people who have died alone in 2016 because of that. Worringly, that is a long-term trend, with more than twice as many people dying from drug use in Scotland than a decade ago. The Scottish Government's flagship road to recovery programme has been branded a total failure. Professor Neil McGenegy of Glasgow based Centre for Substantious Research has spoken of the financial black hole created by a programme that parks people on methadone with no attempt to get people off drugs altogether. In last year, we saw huge cuts to the alcohol and drug funding, with health boards told to top up the budgets themselves. As a false economy by the BMA, we saw alcohol and drug partnership budgets cut by 22 per cent. Can the minister honestly say that the Government has really committed to getting people off drugs altogether, addressing the number of reasons why people might be on them in the first place? Ruth Maguire I thank Annie Wells for taking an intervention, and I am sorry for the losses that you have experienced. If you accept that this is not about either or, it is not about stopping trying to prevent harmful drug use in the first place. It is about providing protection for the 400 to 500 people who are injecting publicly in the area that you represent and are really vulnerable to real harm out there. Annie Wells What I am trying to say is that there is so much that we could have done before we got to this crisis point. That is why I would like to see a full sector led debate. Are we seriously making a concerted effort to take people off methadone altogether, which in itself is a huge problem, or are we merely parking them on the drug in the hope that this issue will just go away? Significantly, of the 867 people that unfortunately died in 2016, the heroin substitute methadone was implicated in 42 per cent of fatalities. We need greater transparency over this issue. Information is difficult to obtain on the numbers of those on methadone prescriptions and whether or not those on long-term methadone programmes are being seen by their GP for a review every three months, as recommended. For effective intervention, we need to understand what has happened on the ground, and we do not. The Scottish Government made the commitment to create a new system of collating information on drugs and alcohol, otherwise known as daisy. Seven years ago, and yet, as I understand, this has been pushed back again to October of this year. This should be a priority. I should be the focus on promoting smaller, abstinence-based local treatments that actually help drug users to kick the habit. I visited some of those places during a visit to Turning Point in Glasgow. It struck me just what the lasting effects of drug addiction can do. During a frank and open discussion with service users, some who had completed the abstinence programme and some still on that journey, their personal stories were deeply moving. Most of them had realised that their addiction to drugs was due to adverse childhood experiences, such as abuse and family breakdown. In that programme, they were receiving the help and support that they needed to deal with what was the root of their problem. One of the service users that I spoke to, a female in her 30s, explained that she had been abused as a young girl. That started her on the path to taking heroin. She never got the help and support that she needed during the initial years of drug abuse. She then had a baby in her late teens, and she was unable to have a proper relationship with her child, whom she did not see for 16 years. Through the abstinence programme at Turning Point, the peer support that she received in access to mental health treatment, she is now starting to build that relationship with the child that she had never known. I also spoke to a man in his early 40s who had been in and out of prison and lost any kind of relationship he had with his family because of his addiction to drugs. That started at an early age, and again, the crux of the problem was never realised. In and out of prison, and he was still taking part in the methadone programme whilst in prison, but also still being able to obtain illicit drugs. Although those are just two examples, there are many people out there with similar stories to tell. That is why those locally-based abstinence programmes are so vitally important. The situation in Glasgow is extremely worrying. The member needs to realise that some people are far away from abstinence, and they need help with their recovery. Does she concede that there is not an eye there or that this enables people to connect with services, people who are not connected currently with services, which gives us the best possible approach to protecting people from a drug related death? Does she not concede that that is what evidence tells us? Could I just say that I absolutely want people connected to services? Of course they do. That is why I would rather not have seen the ambulance in my street earlier on in the year that a friend of mine had died. He had been on drugs for 25, 30 years on methadone all that time. I know that there are people who will not connect, but surely we need to look at the whole solution and not just one thing, not just—no, we are talking about what we are talking about here—excuse me, you intervened, I am answering your question—what we are talking about here is setting up a place where we can put people who are so far removed to say, there you go, there is a place to go and take heroin. Is that like saying, we have forgotten about you? I am sorry, but if you ask why our services are not put— In 2016, 30 per cent of all drug-related deaths in Scotland occurred in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde health board area, and around 20 per cent of all drug-related deaths occurred in Glasgow city. As most of us are aware, there has been a recent Surgeon HIV case in Glasgow, something that has been described as a health epidemic. Therefore, although I fundamentally do not support the creation of a drug facility, I do believe that it is time to have a sector-led review of Scotland's drug strategy. That is why, if this facility ever did go get the go-ahead, it would have to be part of a wider recovery-focused strategy that aims to reduce the number of addicts in Scotland. Addicts who use this facility must be provided with additional support towards recovery. That would have to be monitored extremely closely and evidently said, and if it had shown not to be working, it should be abandoned. To finish today, I would like again to reiterate my call for a full review of Scotland's drug strategy. I am concerned that the introduction of a safe injecting facility is a crisis measure in response to the long-term failings of Scotland's drug policy. We should never have got to this point, and I am concerned that a facility would send out the message, as I have said before, to those people who have given up altogether. I want Scotland to be ambitious with its strategy and for the Scottish Government to focus on the powers that it has to make real progress when it comes to addiction. The stakes are too high, and hope surely comes in getting people off those drugs altogether so that they can live their best lives. I can ask Ms Wells to move the amendment to her name. The increase in drug-related deaths is a tragedy. A tragedy for the individuals, for their friends and family and for society. Scotland tops the league table across the EU for drug-related deaths, and the position is getting worse, not better. In the last decade, the drug death rate has doubled. Drug deaths in Scotland are 160 per million of population. The EU average is 21. It is also not just an ageing drug user issue. Drug use among our young people is, I believe, just as prevalent now as has ever been. The substance may not be the same, but we are kidding ourselves on if we believe that young people are not using drugs. NDMA, legal highs, cannabis, cocaine and other drug use are rife in communities right across our country. I think that we cannot allow ourselves to be viewed as the distant suits somehow out of touch with reality. Sadly, I think that much of what we see in our television screens and in the cinema continues that glorification of some forms of drug use. That is why we must, with honesty and good faith, consider where the current approach is working. That is not a political attack on the Scottish Government's current drug strategy. It is a candid reflection that we are failing as a nation. I say that in full recognition that drug deaths have been steadily increasing since 1995, and for long periods since then, my party has been in power. I want to be clear that I do not believe that we can continue as we are. That is why today we will be supporting the Scottish Government's motion, and I hope that the Government will recognise the good faith of our amendment and support it too. That is far too serious an issue. Far too many lives are being lost and far too many families are affected for this issue to be used as some kind of political football, or even as a proxy for constitutional conflict between the Scottish and UK Governments. Instead, we should not allow it to become that. Whatever position we agree today, we have to be honest enough to say that the safe injection facilities are not the answer in themselves, and whatever benefits they may bring, they are not the silver bullet to solving Scotland's drug problem. Nobody in this chamber is seriously suggesting that one injection room and one part of one city is an adequate response to Scotland's very serious drug problem, but they may all have a part to play. We believe that, if necessary, powers should be devolved if all other avenues have been exhausted, but in support of the Government's motion, we are not willing to give the Government a free ride. There are some serious questions to answer, not least how the minister believes that cutting the funding to drug and alcohol partnerships will make things better. From a budget of over £69 million in 2014-50 to a budget of less than £54 million now, it cannot simply be written off as a coincidence that, over this period, drug deaths have increased sharply. It cannot simply be a coincidence that the health impacts of dirty needles are going up when some needle exchanges are closing down. I welcome the minister's explanation on how the cutting of budgets has had, if any, a positive difference. Coming back to the motion, while on those benches we support the Glasgow safe injection space proposals, it is clear that we need to see a wholesale change in approach to drug strategy. Why? Because the evidence before us is stark. Whatever else our drug strategy may be, it is not a success. Our drug strategy is failing. It is failing individuals. It is failing families. It is failing whole communities. It is failing our nation. We need to have—I am happy to. I appreciate a lot of what Anna Sarwar has said in the way in which she has articulated. I hope again that the purpose of bringing forward the motion and the way that I have is to ensure that we can focus on this one element of drug policy, so that it does not become a constitutional issue to make sure that we find consensus. However, in terms of the failing strategy, would you not concede that there has been successes and that many people do not want to rip up the current strategy but build upon it? Because we have had Naloc first-ever national Nalocs and Rollout programme, we see a reduction in young people who are taking drugs. We also see a flourishing recovery community, all of which can trace its routes back to the recovery strategy, which we know has shortfalls but which we want to plug and which does not suggest that the entire strategy and approach has been a failure. Does the service to many people who are working incredibly hard to deliver that current strategy? I would emphasise the point that I made that this is not an attack on the Scottish Government. It is not an attack on the existing strategy, it is not an attack on the minister, it is not an attack on the people who are doing lots of very important work right across the country. What it is is a reflection on the stats, the numbers, the evidence, the facts on the ground. I know what the minister says about young people and the use of drugs, but I am sorry that it is not the experience that I get from speaking to young people the length and breadth of our country. Young people are seeing drugs in a much more normalised way. Part of the challenge is that, yes, there has been increased drug usage among those that are crisis individuals and crisis families, but what worries me is that there are lots of people who will not be regarded as crisis individuals or crisis families who are normalising the use of drugs right across the country. That might not be intravenous drugs, it might not be heroin, but it is things such as the legal highs, the NDMAs, the cannabis and cocaine. That is why we need a fresh approach. There is a large degree of consensus across the chamber, and I think that some of that has been articulated. I think that there is a large degree of consensus among people who deal and work with that every single day right across our country. That is why we are committed to a fresh and wide-ranging approach to dealing with our country's drugs problems. The member is coming into his last minute. I am going to lose a little extra time, so he will go on into venture, but he has to be very brief. I am not entirely clear whether the member sees substance misuse as a public health issue or a criminal justice matter. I would be grateful if he could clarify. I am actually just coming on to that. I see it as a public health matter, and I am just coming on to that. The complex nature of substance abuse considers that this would be something that we look right across portfolio. We look at our justice system on policing, on housing and local government, but more importantly the impact of poverty, of inequality and austerity on the prevalence of drug use. That is why Labour will hold a wide-ranging cross-sector, cross-portfolio drug summit to consider new and innovative ways to improve the policy and political response to Scotland's addiction problems. I think that Alison Johnstone and I are probably very much on the same wavelength as in terms of not making this purely about a criminal justice issue, but actually making it less about a criminal justice issue and more about a public health issue. I think that we should seek to learn lessons from across Scotland, across the UK, from across the world on how other countries have changed their approach. As a result, they have changed the levels of drug use. There are bold and independent examples, Portugal being one, but I will not go into much detail on that given the time that we have. I think that we need to be brave enough to consider those proposals and do so in a cross-party way. Finally, in closing, simply doing the same things over and over again with the same for law and hope that things might be different in the future is not the definition of an effective evidence-led policy. I close by urging the Scottish Government, like the minister has said, not to use today support as some kind of proxy for a different disagreement, but to use our support today and the willingness of members across the chamber to have a fresh look to consider new ways so that, years from now, people can look back and say that, today, in this place, we began the process of turning around Scotland's place as the drug's death capital of the year. I now call Alec Cole-Hamilton to speak to and move amendment 11695.1, and time is now getting tight. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. If I forget at the end, I move the amendment in my name. Can I start by thanking the Scottish Government for securing time for today's debate? It is a crucial issue, and I think that the recent coverage on things like channel 4 news and our own understanding of the issue makes this absolutely prescient. I am grateful to that. I also welcome the efforts by the minister to foster consensus around today's motion. It was very important to me that she reached out to each of us to talk to us about the wording of the amendment. I am grateful to her for that. I also recognise the journey that her party has been on in the progressive attitude to addiction that the phrasing of that motion hints at, and I thank her for that as well. Before I give the full sum support of those benches to that motion, I must, I fear, depart from that spirit of consensus briefly. More than twice as many people are dying from drug use in this country as when her Government came to power. This country's rate of drug-related deaths is two and a half times that of the UK as a whole. Despite the minister's response to my intervention, ADP funding is not at record levels. Her Government's response was to cut funding levels by 23 per cent in 2015. That is £1.3 million in our capital city each year alone. I and colleagues such as Neil Findlay, Anna Sarwar and Miles Briggs raised that repeatedly over the past two years, but the Government did not rectify it fast enough and people are dead as a result of it. A total of 867 people in Scotland died after using illegal or prescription drugs in 2016—23 per cent more than the year previous and 106 per cent more than 10 years ago. Figures also show that heroin and opioids—I will do in a second—were implicated in 88 per cent of those deaths, which is why we will support the Government's motion today. I thank the member for giving way. I want to pinpoint the fact. I will draw on what Anna Sarwar said. Evidence tells us that drug deaths have been increasing since the mid-1990s, and that that is why we are in this situation, because it has been rising. It has been an increasing trend. It is not necessarily correct to merely correlate funding scenarios with drug-related deaths. That does not disservice to the point that we are trying to get to today, which is to try to find an effective solution to some of the issues that we are grappling with in Scotland. Alex Cole-Hamilton I am grateful to the minister for that intervention, but if your response to an upward shift in drug-related deaths is to cut ADB funding, then there is something fundamentally wrong with your Government's approach to drugs policy. While I remind the Government of its failure in that regard, I welcome that motion, and I hope for more like it to come, because there are many benefits to safe injecting spaces. 100 facilities globally, with over 30 years of experience, have a massive weight of empirical evidence behind their efficacy. They reduce risky behaviour in terms of needle sharing, and I declare an interest as code convener on the cross-party group of sexual health and blood-borne viruses. It is in part why we have seen the rise of HIV infection in the city of Glasgow. There is a direct correlation with the drug deaths in that city. I share the Government's consternation that the Lord Advocate will not give immunity from prosecution for people using the centre. I have some sympathy with the idea of devolving drugs policy. It is consistent with other models of federalism that my party aspires to, but my focus right now, and that on my party, is on changing the landscape of our policy response to drug use across the whole of those islands. My amendment delineates the rest of the iceberg of which safe injection services are just the tip. The Government motion rightly describes this as a public health issue, and that is absolutely right. I want to, if I may, use the example of cannabis, because I think that there are public health benefits to cannabis that we are not quite yet exploring. I have raised before with the cabinet secretary herself the example of Murray Gray, who is a five-year-old constituent of mine in West Sedenborough. Murray suffers from a very severe form of epilepsy, which sees him suffer many violent episodes and attacks and fits every single day. The only thing that can offer him any kind of relief is a cannabis derivative called cannabidiol. Murray's mother Karen is about to take Murray to the haig against the advice of his doctors because he is unwell enough to travel so that he can have that medication prescribed there. I accept that this is not down to the cabinet secretary. This is a UK problem in cannabis therapy prescriptions, but it is a problem nonetheless. Cannabis can provide many, many untold health benefits to a range of conditions, but right now it is only causing incalculable harm. Harm in the cannabis farms tended by children, traffic to this country and held in slave conditions. Harm in the weapons grade skunk available on the black market, which is linked to severe psychological difficulty, for which we could be generating revenue streams, which we can funnel back into treatment, and harm in wasted police time and capacity in our prisons. Remember, Deputy Presiding Officer, that 60 per cent of drug arrests last year were for the possession of cannabis. The war on drugs was lost a long time ago, yet members in this chamber are still fighting it. Do we need to get those? The member is just about going to his last minute, so be brief please. I wonder if the member can explain whether he advocates the decriminalisation of cannabis for health use only or for all cannabis decriminalisation. Alex Cole-Hamilton Happy to do so. Not only do we see it decriminalised for the health use but absolutely we have called for a national UK-wide regulated cannabis market for recreational use. We also need to take the profit derived from that recreational cannabis market out of the hands of dealers and human traffickers and into the treasury to free up which will be bolstered by freed up criminal justice capacity as well. We need to ensure those that can derive medical support and help from cannabis-derived therapies are supported to do so. Our drug policies have failed. My ending was very similar to Anna Sarwar's in that the definition of insanity is to do things again and again and expect the same results. I move the amendment in my name. Alison Johnstone Thank you very much. I now call Alison Johnstone to open for the greens, please, Ms Johnstone. You look a bit surprised. I am surprised, Presiding Officer. Did you not know that you were going to speak? I did know that I was going to speak, but I am pleasantly surprised. The outbreak of HIV infections in Glasgow is a completely needless public health crisis. It may affect more than one in five of the 500 vulnerable people thought to inject drugs in Glasgow city centre, as we have heard, and it is the worst seen in the UK for three decades. There can be no room for complacency here. At least in Glasgow city council and on the areas IGBs, there has been cross-party consensus on the need to treat this as the crisis it is. We must commend all involved on the plans to institute a safe drug consumption facility. The Scottish Greens have long believed that substance abuse is a public health issue. We fully agree that it is incumbent upon the UK Government to make necessary changes to the existing legislative regime to allow this vital health service to be introduced. Given the public health basis for this facility, I believe that the most appropriate change would be to devolve relevant powers of the control of drugs to this Parliament. Efforts to save lives, reduce harm and support people who struggle with addiction are hampered by a counterproductive insistence on treating substance abuse as a criminal matter. However, I am also stressed that I have real concerns over the loss of a needle exchange service in Glasgow city centre. There are no legislative barriers to providing hygienic injecting equipment, and the lack of provision in that area must be addressed immediately. That was the busiest facility of its kind in Scotland. Every day, without good access to hygienic injection equipment, it puts people at greater risk. While there is clearly work to be done to reach agreement on the powers that are needed to put safe drug consumption facilities in place, there is no excuse for failing to provide appropriate needle exchange facilities where they are in greatest demand. Miles Briggs. I thank the minister for giving way on that point. A number of us raised concerns on the very action that NHS Glasgow took. Do you think that the Scottish Government should have taken earlier action to prevent that closure? I think that action is urgently needed. If we could reach consensus on that today, I would be very grateful. Similarly, there is no need to delay the provision of heroin assisted treatment. I am glad to see Greater Glasgow and Clyde pressing ahead to develop that. A heroin assisted treatment facility could also operate a needle exchange facility without contravening existing prosecution policy. In the long term, however, we need to be able to introduce safer drug consumption facilities. Plans to do that in Glasgow were developed on the basis that it would be instrumental in tackling the recent HIV outbreak. It would be key to a greater level of engagement with drug users who have complex health needs and who are not receiving the help that they need from other services. It is well documented that safe drug consumption facilities can reduce the risk of disease transmission, the risk of overdose and prevent other harm by improving access to addiction services and other health and social care support. NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde's report Taking Away the Chaos illustrates that the majority of people who inject drugs in public places in the city centre are vulnerable in many ways, having experienced homelessness, imprisonment and chronic poverty. The Scottish Drugs Forum is clear that drug consumption rooms will help health professionals reach the most marginalised drug users. The review of evidence from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction shows that in many European cities, drug consumption rooms provide a range of other health services, including referral to treatment and access to a nurse or a GP for primary care. The BMA supports the introduction of these facilities and highlights strong evidence that, when drug users can access these safe spaces, there is less public injection and surrender sharing. Consequently, the risk of transmitted infection is reduced. In Scotland, we have made a commitment to eliminate hepatitis C by 2030. Prevention through treatment is an important part of that, but so is ensuring that drug users are not sharing syringes. I was alarmed to read in Taking Away the Chaos that people who injected drugs considered hepatitis C ubiquitous and therefore inevitable, and that sharing communal batches of drugs or using needles stored at public injection locations was common place. We cannot hope to eliminate hepatitis C without providing sufficient clean injecting equipment and safe places to use it. The hepatitis C trust supports the introduction of safe drug consumption facilities. We cannot tolerate such a serious public safety issue. Nobody should have to worry about dangerous needles being left in their closies, in their backcourts or on the streets in our parks. It is a really important point that drug consumption facilities will make our cities safer for everyone. The BMA is also clear that there is no basis to believe that introducing supervised consumption rooms increases drug use. In fact, in Switzerland and Spain, some facilities have closed because heroin use has decreased, so it was beyond frustrating to find those plans blocked due to reserved legislation. The Lord Advocate has recognised the clear public health basis for those plans and recommended an approach to the UK Government to devolve relevant powers. It is simply unacceptable for the UK Government to have stated that it had no intention of supporting the proposal or of devolving the necessary powers. It is really important that the Scottish Parliament sends a clear view of the need to introduce those facilities and to amend legislation or to devolve the powers as necessary. Thank you very much. Open debate. Speeches are tight. Six minutes, please. Emma Harper, to be followed by Brian Whittle. Ms Harper, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I am pleased to speak in this afternoon's debate and having just heard the contributions across chamber, I think that we really need to look at different approaches to help people who are having problems with heroin use. I am even more convinced that this path for safe consumption facilities is the way that we need to proceed in support. In preparation for this debate today, as a member of the health and sport committee, I refreshed my memory as to what the strategic plan and vision for the committee is and the committee's strategic plan states that, in all of our actions and our overriding aim is to improve the health of the people in Scotland. With that said, it is my firm belief that any drug policy change should not be focused on punishing people but on providing help and support to those who need it. I absolutely support the proposals that the minister has put forward in this motion so that we can do something different to help people, provide harm reduction and, in doing so, avoid unnecessarily deaths. I welcome today Alison Thewlis MP to chamber, and I will follow the progress of her member's bill as it proceeds through UK Government. I really think that we do need to do something different. We need a different approach and we need to recognise that the most vulnerable people need our help. Evidence taken at the committee included the fact that we need to address the stigma attached to drug use and misuse that our fellow human beings, our brothers, sisters, parents, aunts, uncles and friends need our help. We need to treat people with compassion, dignity, care and, as I mentioned, not impose criminality. As a registered nurse with over 30 years of experience who has cared for people with addiction problems, I had my eyes opened when I was studying for my degree at the University of West of Scotland. One module focused on drugs and alcohol. The tutor, Dr Ian McPhee, inspired me and I learned a lot about what Annie Wells was discussing, about what is the cause of people that leads them to take opioids or other drugs in the first place. There is work that has been research conducted by Bruce Alexander, who is a Canadian addiction specialist and a researcher for more than 40 years, who conducted the rat park experiments. Those experiments aim to show the effect that the environment has on drug consumption and to show that the drug itself is not the sole cause of addiction. Bruce built a rat colony 200 times the size of a normal lab cage with rats of both sexes. He wanted to show that, in previous research, experiments carried out by others, the reason why the rats showed signs of addiction after drug exposure was because of their poor, cramped, aged conditions, which caused stress and anxiety. When the rats had improved conditions with toys, comforts and mates, the rats, given the choice to take either sweet morphine water or normal water, chose the normal water. The same experiment was happening at the same time with humans, the Vietnam War. Many of the American troops used opioids while in Vietnam, and when they returned home, the users, 98 per cent, did not take heroin again. Environment is really important, and that is one of the things that we can do to explore the options. For me, the safe injection sites is part of this multi-modal approach to look at how we can help support the most vulnerable and marginalised in our cities and places. There are others in place already in Vancouver, Toronto, Boston, Barcelona and Sydney. Those places help to support a stable, supervised, safe place to inject, which significantly reduces unnecessary deaths that can occur from overdose. The staff can supervise the use and administer naloxone if a person's respiratory rate becomes so slow, which is a complication of opioids overdose, that they fail to breathe or they breathe at a rate less than 68 per minute. I have given naloxone to patients when they have came out of the operating room with too much opioid on board, and so the supervised aspect of that prevents people from dying. That is what we really need to focus on, is the support that we can give people. The centres do not even need to be NHS run. In the motion that states that international evidence shows that safer injection facilities have the ability to save lives and reduce harm. In light of that, there is a point that I would like to make about one of our European neighbours, Spain. In Barcelona, there is a centre for safe drug consumption that provides people access to sterile equipment for taking drugs. We have spoken about that already. The counselling is also provided and emergency first aid is needed. If we are going to look at tackling hepatitis C, which Alison Harris has mentioned, we need to look at HIV death also. Annie Wells mentioned HIV, so if we are going to tackle this and reduce the issues of HIV and hepatitis, we need to support the sterile aspects in these safer injection facilities. The arguments in favour of consumption rooms in Scotland are evidence-based, progressive and clearly shows that those centres can save lives. The outdated misuse of Drugs Act 1971, which aims to criminalise and prosecute people, means that if the Scottish Government were to introduce safe injection facilities, the medical staff and the people working there could be prosecuted. I am in support of the motion today that we ask the UK Government to act on their drug laws. I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate, not least of all because it does challenge me and the position that I would have taken prior to taking up my position in this Parliament. I will freely admit that not that long ago my instinct would be to rail against any policy that allows or enables illegal drug taking in any form. I have always struggled to understand how a person could get into a point where they would voluntarily and knowingly enter into an activity that causes such self-harm. However, one of the things that this job allows if an MSP chooses to do so is to engage with members of the public from all backgrounds to inform and educate in their realities. To that end, I want to thank the many organisations across communities that have offered me the opportunity to speak to them and, more importantly, to their service users. This honest, works-and-all engagement has certainly helped to inform and, in many cases, challenge and change my own approach. Specifically with the issue that we are discussing today, I want to thank Ad Action in Kilmarnock, Catalyst, HM Prison in Kilmarnock and Centre Stage, to name but a few for their continuing access and input. A few weeks ago, having dropped into Ad Action for a catch-up, I raised the question of safe injection houses. The answer that I got was not quite what I expected. There was caution. There was a suggestion that perhaps it would be interesting to see what results would come from establishing a trial in Glasgow. It would have a very limited place in Kilmarnock, but in itself it would not be a solution to an increasing drug problem in East Ayrshire, especially given the rurality and therefore the limited access to many such facilities for many users in that area. We need to know that East Ayrshire has seen the highest rise in drug-related deaths in Scotland, some 104 per cent in a year, with a similar trajectory expected this year. That is against a backdrop that has already been mentioned in Scotland, where we have the unwanted tag of the drug death capital of Europe. When I asked the reasons for the alarming rise, it was the lack of resource and the lack of a joint up thinking between the third sector and the public services that was front and centre and their response. The Health and Sport Committee recently investigated the drug issues in the community. As part of that process, I took evidence from service users. I heard the story of a woman who had been put on methadone and remained on methadone for over 20 years. Incredibly, she had been unaware that she could actually get off of this drug. It wasn't until she bumped into a peer who was able to tell her how she managed to take the steps to continue her rehabilitation and eventually get clean from all drugs and treatments that she realised that her journey was not complete. She is now completely clean, has a job and has a very positive relationship with her daughter. I related the story and other stories of service users being parked on methadone to the Health and Sport Committee and discovered that other committee members had heard similar stories. However, the guidance says that a person's medication profile should be revisited annually. That guidance is not being universally applied, obviously. That is my concern, Deputy Presiding Officer. Treatments such as methadone are in themselves not the solution, rather than only part of a potential solution. If we go back to the ad actions assertion that are reducing resources filtering through to the front line, what concerns me is that all the current strategies that are doing is shifting the issue and not adequately supporting those requiring help to get a lifestyle without illicit drugs and their treatments. What has become obvious to me is that the Scottish Government's drug strategy, as mirrored with other strategies such as the much criticised mental health strategy, is that its approach seems to be based very much on a clinical solution, rather than on a much broader approach that is required, including a cohesive preventative element. Related to that is the rising issue of addiction to antidepressants and the Scottish Government's illicit approach to the obesity epidemic that we have in Scotland. I have an obvious lack of basic understanding of the preventative health agenda, and I will give way to it. I think that Brian Whittle misunderstands much of what has been achieved through the road to recovery, including the 120 plus recovery communities. It is not a medical solution to recovery, but finding peer support among people who have gone through that journey themselves. Surely he would welcome that and would not suggest that the attempts of the Scottish Government is only through an NHS response to drug addiction, but it is much broader, much more holistic, in the way that Labour amendments suggest that we should be taking forward our approach. Brian Whittle? The reality is that drug deaths in Scotland are rising at an exponential rate. The fact of the matter is that I am telling you that everyone is coming from the front line, and they are telling us that resources are not getting to them and that their resources are being reduced. That is why you have to get a grasp of reality. That speaks to the crux of this debate and why the Scottish Conservative amendment calls for a sector-led review of the existing drug strategy, because the current strategy is quite simply failing. The Scottish Government should be able to accept that and take a step back and allow service users, the third sector and healthcare professionals the opportunity to develop a more cohesive evidence-based strategy that will tackle the issue of drug addiction and the rising drug deaths rate in Scotland. While my thoughts on the creation of a safe injection facility in Glasgow are no longer black and white, I would also suggest that, as has already been said, it cannot be seen as a panacea in tackling the drug issue. There are elements of the Government's motion that we would support. Of course, we should make every effort to prevent people from starting the misuse of illegal drug substances and help them to support the need to protect from the harm caused by the use of drugs, but the trouble is, the above is a vision without meaning if there is no plan on how that will be achieved. I am afraid that that is reminiscent of many of the statements that I have heard from the SNP in this chamber. As we know, the definition of madness is to keep going and doing the same thing and expect a different result. It is time for change. I call Fulton MacGregor to be followed by Neil Findlay. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I will take this opportunity to remind the chamber and the PLO to the health secretary. I fully support the Government's motion. I believe that the UK Government should take action to devolve power, to allow the Scottish Government to take the action and implement those ambitious plans, designed to tackle unsafe drug consumption, and particularly allow us to implement safe injection services in our cities. Our drug problems are not as simple as it is a war on drugs or pursuing a drug-free society. Those are ideals, not dealing with real people. We need to face the reality that addressing our relationship with drugs is much more complicated than eradicating the supplier use. That proposal seeks to help the most vulnerable. We need to be bold and radical to help those people, a generation many who faced up to some horrendous policies in their youth and teenage years of their time. That is a group where methadone, suboxone and counselling are just not working. It is not an either-or situation. Annie Wells referred to this as needing a net to catch some people. That is part of that net. That is for 500 people, as has been mentioned earlier. Brian Whittle talked about the front line in my previous role before being elected as a criminal justice social worker. I worked intensely with the drug services. My experience of the front line is something that is indeed needed. There is real evidence that safe injection services are successful, and a number of European countries' supervised consumption has become an integrated component of services offered within drug treatment systems. I was very heartened to read that, in Switzerland and Spain, some drug consumption rooms have been so successful that they are no longer needed and there has been such a reduction in those injecting heroin. That is an inspiring evidence that we cannot ignore. We have seen the success of needle exchange facilities and, again, we cannot ignore the outbreak of HIV in Glasgow. 24 new cases were identified from drug use in Glasgow in 2017, whereas in other regions, except in my own, in Lanarkshire, there were none. In Lanarkshire, there were less than five, although that is still deeply worrying. It is estimated that one in five of the 500 users who inject drugs in Glasgow is involved in the HIV outbreak, which has now seemed to be affecting around 120 people. There are real challenges that are faced in engaging with this population and ensuring that they are taking treatment. A drug consumption facility would offer the opportunity to engage with this population and ensure that the treatment is in place. I back the refreshed substance misuse strategy as it ensures that the wider health and social needs of those who struggle with drug and alcohol addiction are taken into account as part of people's on-going treatment and support. By joining up with a range of on-going work across government to tackle poor mental health, loneliness, social isolation, stigma and employability, we are ensuring that engagement among the vulnerable is high and that they will be encouraged to use services available to them to ensure treatment is available and that the associated harms of drugs are reduced. Although we must encourage needle exchange, it is obvious that there is a problem in Glasgow. As the Royal Pharmaceutical Society pointed out, Scotland's busiest needle exchange at Glasgow central station has closed, and it will no doubt have a long-term negative impact on public health. I know that Alison Johnson also mentioned that. Without a safe place to exchange needles, we would undoubtedly see our eyes in needles on the street, causing potential harm to others. I understand that the proposed safer consumption facility is designed to service the needs of an estimated four or five hundred individuals who inject publicly in the city centre, but I also feel that there is an opportunity to ensure that individuals are injecting away from the family environment where children or younger siblings may be witness to drug abuse. I go back to the ACEs debate that my colleague Gail Ross had recently, in the context of that, in protecting children and young people from that specific harm. The research and evidence is there to show that supervised drug consumption facilities results in a reduction of high-risk injecting behaviours such as needle sharing, thus leading to a lower risk of HIV transmission and death from overdose. There has been evidence provided by ecological studies suggesting that queer coverage as adequate drug consumption rooms may contribute to reducing drug-related death at city level, and ultimately there are no recorded cases of a fatal overdose in a drug consumption room. In 2016, Scotland had 867 deaths from fatal overdose of drugs, the highest number of deaths from drug overdose in Europe, as many others have highlighted. There is no denying that Scotland has a high rate of drug overdose deaths, an average of an overdose death every 10 hours. However, the introduction of that widely would ensure that such facilities become an alternative to public injecting. I think that the Government should be commended in taking that head on. That would not perhaps tackle those who inject at home or in other environments that would certainly make an impact on those who overdose in city-central environments. Drug-taking in the general adult population is indeed falling, sorry, and drug-taking levels among young people remains low, but the issues in Scotland are deep-rooted and long-standing, and we need a robust strategy to tackle that. A safer consumption facility in Glasgow, example of how ambitious and innovative responses have been generated at the front line, and I believe that working in partnership ensures that we are taking measures at the correct level to address drug consumption and the risks associated. Of course, we should ensure that drug problems do not develop in the first place. However, we are not there yet, and those who are using drugs should have the opportunity to do so safely and do so with support available. Furnable and exposed users would have a support system in place, offering an opportunity for care, harm reduction and treatment options if we introduced a safer consumption facility, and many of those who are users of heroin are homeless, suffering from poor mental health and require support as members of one of the most marginalised populations. I believe that such facilities will only work through acceptance, correct promotion and ensuring their safe environments without risk to both users and support workers. The evidence is there that the Scottish drug forum supports those proposals based on the evidence collected from existing facilities around the world, which are now more than 100. The proposal is not a cure-all, as the minister said, but I believe that it is an appropriate and robust step in tackling Scotland's relationship with drugs. We have a really unique opportunity to deliver anivated drug policy that transforms Scotland into a beacon of compassionate effective approaches towards drug use. Presiding Officer, let's be bold and support this motion at decision time tonight. Thank you very much. I call Neil Findlay to be followed by Claire Hawking. Mr Findlay, please. I want to be clear from the outset that I am speaking for myself on this issue, not as a spokesperson for my party. I am not attempting to undermine anyone. I am not attempting to attack the Government or any other political party, because I think that this issue is just too important to be a party political dogfight. People have mentioned the statistics—almost 900 Scots dying from drugs-related death. That's a son or daughter or brother or sister or a mum or dad to someone—a 10 per cent increase over 10 years. It is every one of us. It's all our duties to speak out about this. If that was the rates for flu or another illness, we would be rushing to do something. It's twice the rate of the death for liver cancer—the same rate as prostate cancer. Philip MacGregor mentioned that there is a death every 10 hours. Let's let that sink in. Eight times higher than the EU average, we must do something about this. Focusing on the drugs consumption rooms—let me be clear, I fully support that proposal—focusing on that today undermines the absolute gravity of what we are facing. If we go about our villages, towns and cities, bars and pubs, where I live, if we look out the window and speak to people, we get the real picture. Drugs are readily and cheaply available. The price of cocaine is such that it's available now in every community. Ecstasy is selling for £5, herring for 10, valium less than a pound, and much of street valium is counterfeit, laced with the likes of rehypnol. The spike in HIV infection in Glasgow saw the injecting room proposal as a response, and that, in my view, has great merit. However, it's one tiny part of a big complex chigsaw that we have to construct if we're serious about addressing this public health crisis. That's why I appeal to the minister to come back in Government time with a much wider debate. Like other members, I've met with several groups and people over the last year who are seeking their help for their drugs use. That's what they told me. They said that the system is failing them in society. They said that when a drug user seeks initial help, they feel supported and can be stabilised. However, when that period of support ends and their case is passed over to their GP, it becomes a medical issue and the support services very often disappear, leaving the person exposed again. They said that it was a situation that they felt has been exacerbated by the cuts to adult support services and to council services that often play a supporting role. A number felt that they had been, in their words, and I quote, parked on methadone for long periods of time. I spoke to one man who'd been on it for 25 years and another for 15. Both wanted to be drug and methadone free. Methadone has its place. I am not here to bash opiate replacement far, far from it, but being crime free and illicit drug free for them was not the success that they saw. They wanted to be free, certainly. I am very grateful to Neil Findlay for giving way. Does he agree with me that, whilst methadone has its place, that heroin-assisted therapies in other countries have been backed up with science evidence as being particularly efficacious? I think that we should look at all of that. I think that absolutely we should. All of the people who spoke to brought up the need for mental health support and the lack of community psychiatric treatment. When they do get support, it is helpful, but provision is patchy and often not sustained. Several spoke of the depression and loneliness and social isolation of addiction, factors that added to their predicament. Funding for projects was raised as a very significant problem facing services, and Alex Cole-Hamilton mentioned the cuts to the drug and alcohol partnerships. Those cuts were made at a time when we need greater support than ever. That is the error that has been made. The system is broken, and I think that we need a brave and radically different approach. Prohibition in telling people that drugs are evil and people who take them are bad and factless will just see death rates rise even further. We need a new approach. We can never ever arrest our way to a drugs-free society. Indeed, our jails are often the source of people being introduced to new drugs, like Spice. We must recognise the scale of the public health crisis, particularly among working-class communities. If that was a middle-class crisis, I believe that we would have had action a long time ago, and many of those issues would have been addressed, but many of them can be addressed here and now. I think that we should go much further. I think that we should examine the Portuguese model that looks at the relationship that people have with drugs and focuses on them as individuals. In 2001, Portugal became the first country to agreement and decriminalise the possession and consumption of all illicit substances. Rather than being arrested, those who are caught with a personal supply might be warned, fined or told to appear before a local commission to discuss treatment harm reduction and support. Dealers and organised crime are still dealt with very robustly through criminal law. When that was introduced, the following years saw dramatic drops in problematic drug use, infection rates, overdraws, deaths, crime and incarceration rates in HIV plummeted from an all-time high of 104 cases per million to 4.2 cases per million, and overall drugs use declined. I understand the misuse of drugs act as a reserved issue. I want to see change across the UK, but not just in relation to consumption rooms. We need a holistic approach. I think that it will take bravery and commitment and honesty, but the status quo means more deaths, more infection and greater profits for organised criminals. Finally, I feel that I understand why people have the reaction that they do to drug users. In our society, we have been taught that the best way to deal with them is through imprisonment in the criminal justice system. That approach has failed communities. It has failed the police, and it has certainly failed the 867 families who have someone who died in the last year. I refer members to my entry in the register of interests in that I am a registered mental health nurse and currently hold an honorary contract with NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. I am very grateful for today's opportunity to discuss safe injecting rooms. That will now be the third occasion that I have spoken in favour of this type of healthcare facility, which has proven around the world to save lives. It is a huge source of frustration to me that this Parliament is unable to pass legislation that would allow safe injecting facilities to be established in Scotland, a place where they are greatly needed. A 10-minute drive from my constituency office in Rutherglen is the heart of Glasgow's city centre, a city centre where straight injecting of heroin continues, where associated health issues are on their eyes and where people who use drugs are risking their lives on a daily basis. Many of them have long-standing heroin usage despite repeated rounds of existing treatments such as methadone and residential rehabilitation, and yet the addiction and the risk to public health and public order remains. Research undertaken by Glasgow city health and social care partnerships suggests that there are approximately 400 to 500 people injecting drugs in public places in the city centre on a regular basis. However, many of them do not have the option of taking drugs in a clean and secure environment. Those drugs are often taken in alleys hidden under bridges, on waste ground and in dark public car parks, and each and every day those people risk their lives if the overdose out of sight with no immediate help available to them. The scale of Glasgow's problem can be evidenced when looking at the proportion of Scotland's drug-related deaths occurring in the city and of the 867 drug-related deaths in 2016, 30 per cent of them, 257, took place within the Greater Glasgow and Clyde NHS board area. The statistic of 257 deaths in Glasgow is not merely a statistic, it is an individual person with their own story and background. They are mothers, fathers, sons and daughters who are let down by UK drug policy and a UK Government who refuses to look at the evidence of successive years with safe injection facilities overseas. As members will be aware, not only in Glasgow counting the cost of drug-related deaths, the city is also in the midst of an HIV outbreak involving 120 people. As reported by ITV's Peter Smith last month, almost every person diagnosed with HIV in Glasgow uses heroin, and its prevalence is spreading faster than anywhere else in the UK. In a step that will only exacerbate the growing problem in September of last year, Network Rail, as Alison Johnstone, alluded to, closed their needle exchange service in Central Station. This service was Scotland's busiest, handing out over 1,000 clean injection sets to people each month and benefiting 2,000 since it was opened in 2016. As it stands, it is extremely difficult to control the spread of the virus, therefore new ways of thinking are required. Drastic public health issues need drastic solutions. In 2015, Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership published a report entitled taking away the chaos that looks specifically at the health needs of people who inject drugs in public places in Glasgow City Centre. It concluded quite explicitly in the report that a way to deal with public drug use is to provide safe managed spaces for people to inject. As we have heard, not one single person has ever died in a drug consumption room whilst they improve access to it and increase integration between existing services. Within the taking away the chaos report, a particular reference was made of giving people the opportunity to access housing services, social work, welfare advice, primary care and drug counsellors all under one roof. Indeed, in a 2014 study into 62 drug consumption facilities across Europe, it was found that they provided a wide range of auxiliary services, treating people helistically, looking at all of their health and social care needs, treating the whole person, because that is exactly what those addicted to drugs are—people, not addicts, not users, and they deserve the best evidence-based care that we can provide. However, the benefits of safe injecting rooms are not unique to those who use drugs, but to wider society, too. They would reduce the risk of public injecting, they would reduce drug-related litter and they would cut down on the number of people sharing injecting equipment, which in turn reduces the behaviours that increase the risk of HIV and hepatitis C transmission. The only thing standing in the way of introducing a facility in Glasgow is the UK Government and its drug laws. It is clear from today that we have cross-party support here in Holyrood. However, that is also the case in Westminster and at local government level, too. Earlier this month, Glasgow City Council passed a motion unanimously supporting a drug consumption facility in the city, including support from the Conservative group. In contrast, in other UK cities that have previously considered such measure, the evidence shows that the scale of public injecting in Glasgow and its associated implications to the user and wider societies justifies the introduction of a pilot facility in the city. That is not a political issue, it is a public health issue. While politicians debate drug policy, lives are being lost and families and friends are being bereaved. I therefore call on the UK Government to look at the evidence, to listen to the calls not only from politicians, but from the Scottish Drugs Forum and health professionals and do the right thing. No one is naive enough to think that the introduction of a safe injecting facility will be a silver bullet. However, with sensible policies from Westminster and at Holyrood and at a local level, we can make great progress in tackling this crisis. Scotland's unhealthy relationship with drugs is not changing, so it is time to change your laws. Thank you very much, Ms Hockey. I call Maurice Corry to be followed by Sandra White. Mr Corry, please. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I welcome the opportunity to speak in today's very important debate. For decades, Scotland has faced a serious drug addiction problem with the rise of opiates, synthetic and psychoactive drugs. The problem has continued to grow and evolve, becoming more difficult to tackle. Throughout Scotland and especially in the most vulnerable communities, we continue to see drug addiction take the lives of friends and families. We are also seeing a growing number of cases of diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C as a result of increased needle sharing. I refer, as I said, to Annie Wells' comments about in 2016, when 867 people died from a drug overdose, the total rate increasing by 106 per cent since 2006 to 2016, and therefore putting community safety clearly at risk. In an ideal world, we will seek to have drug-free Scotland, however, with the current crisis levels of drug addiction in Scotland, it is necessary that we take small steps to achieve that. I want us to think globally. We even need the United Nations evolved here through the World Health Organization, the WHO, to get to grips with the growing distribution of high-grade heroin from the poppy fields of Afghanistan, and therefore restrict particularly the distribution and growing of it from the Helmand province in Afghanistan, which I know exists when I worked out there. Addressing the issue would go a long way to help the addiction issue and direct supplies into analgesics through the World Health Organization for health purposes already, and in fact, some years ago, the UK Government did look at that. As part of a wide review of all drug services, we must look into whether the implementation of a safe injection facility—yes. Ruth Maguire I just simply want to ask the member what about the 400 to 500 people who today their lives are in risk in Glasgow injecting in the street? How does cutting off the supply help them? What do we do about them right now? Maurice Corry I thank the member for the intervention. In fact, what you probably may or may not know is that the heroin that is produced in Afghanistan is high-grade heroin from the poppy fields—100 farmers who grow it. It gets on to its way into Pakistan, it gets watered down, it gets diluted, it gets impregnated with wrong products, it comes to the UK market and that is what the damage is done. Therefore, if we can go back and get the World Health Organization to take up that production, I see no reason why we could not restrict it. Maurice Corry I am just curious about those 4 to 500 individuals in the city that I represent who are exposed and vulnerable right now. Can you give them a timescale for your strategy, sir, in relation to when help will reach them? Maurice Corry I thank the member for the intervention. I am not going to put any time limit on it. I am just saying that this is a bigger problem than just what we have here. It is a problem that is global and that we know that we need to go back to the sources of where the product is. Again, I will come on to the safe injecting centres in a second, but my concern is that that product is being adulterated wrongly when it gets into the marketplace and that is part of the problem when it gets to say Glasgow or any other city in our country. Right, okay. I like the way that you connected yourself there. Thank you. Right to you, sir. Off you go. Always a person for a procedure. As part of the wide review of all services, we must look into whether the implementation of a safe injection facility in Glasgow city centre could help in reducing the number of overdose deaths and the number of cases of diseases contracted by using unsterile needles. A dire situation in Glasgow, and I have every sympathy of what the members are saying, and I can understand it. Having worked in Glasgow and I have worked in Maryhill and Possil Park and I have seen the problems there on the streets. As a well, indeed, I have seen it abroad in the Bosnian area and also in Afghanistan. That presents an environment that would allow us to examine if those programmes could be beneficial to Scotland in particular. Around the world, such facilities have been introduced into many communities face addiction problems. As of 2015, nearly 100 facilities have been referred to already operate in 66 European North American cities. The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction has reviewed many of those programmes and the results have been positive in many locations. In the Canadian city of Vancouver, the Insight facility has undergone extensive analysis to ensure that it is deserving its purpose. Research has found that the clients are less likely to engage in HIV-resc behaviour. There was a considerable decrease in public injections and injection-related litter in the area of the facility. Research has also found that, in one year of the city's operation, there was a 30 per cent increase in the use of detoxification programmes by clients. Most strikingly, Vancouver saw a 35 per cent decrease in overdose deaths after two years of the facilities being opened. If we were to open a facility in Scotland, it would need to undergo similar vigorous analysis to ensure that it was impacting the community positively and be part of a wider strategy. The research would require independent studies and a non-site monitoring to ensure that the facilities were functioning the way that it was intended to. Detailed rules would need to be established for both the facility and the individuals utilising its services, bearing in mind many addicts who lead chaotic lifestyles. Those facilities could also have important insight into how drug addiction is changing and allowing the various sectors that are working to combat drug abuse to understand the current state of the problem. The information would help us to better understand the problem and therefore help us to find better solutions. The important facet of those facilities is that they offer support resources and not only to administer drugs safely but pathways to recovery very importantly. Their facilities in Scotland would also have those resources and the recovery is the main focus of all services. Those facilities would need to be used on a transitional basis, attending a safe injection. Facilities should not be seen as a long-term solution but a way to learn about resources and treatment options while still struggling with addiction. In many European countries, those facilities have been implemented specifically in the Netherlands while they have seen a significant decrease in injecting drugs. There has been an increase in smoking. I am sorry, but there must conclude, Mr Corry. I am intervening now, and that means you stop. I remind members that they are slipping into using the term you again. You speak through the chair. I am the only you in the chamber, not yourself, other people as well. I am going to be absolutely brutally honest in this debate. We are looking at people who are long-term drug users who are leading chaotic lifestyles. It is agreed throughout the chamber that they need some help or another. I am the constituency MSP for Glasgow city centre. I know exactly what goes on. I live in the city centre. I can see it, discarded needles and constituents can see it also as raised at community councils, raised with the police, etc. I want to put it in perspective. We have certain areas in Glasgow city centre, which, unfortunately, the poor people who have the chaotic lifestyles will go to discard their needles. The rest of the city centre is perfectly safe and welcoming for anyone who wants to come in to Glasgow city centre. That has absolutely got to be said. The people who are suffering here are 4,500 injection injecting. We really need to look at people who need to save exactly what is happening to them and save their lives. They have to change their lives when they cannot help what they are doing. It has already been said that they do not want to inject in public, etc. Unfortunately, they do inject in public. Kids and members of the public do see that happening. I want to thank everyone who has allowed me to speak to them and give evidence to myself and others in regard to what is happening out there, not just in Glasgow city centre, but in other areas, too. Maybe Jenny Murray will mention that, indeed, in perhaps Edinburgh someone else will mention it, too. We have to look at that in the long term as a health issue, not a justice issue, but I will come back to the justice issue if I have time. It is absolutely a health issue. I want to thank Glasgow city council for unanimously passing its motion in regard to looking at injection centres. I also want to thank my colleague and fellow colleague Alison Thule, the MP who is in the gallery, who has already been mentioned. We share responsibility for Glasgow city centre within our constituencies, and I thank her for putting forward her bill. I want to read a wee bit out of Alison's bill or some of the comments that she made. I think that anyone who has been in this position will know exactly what has been said. Alison said in her comment that, on one day, one of my constituents mentioned to me that Glasgow already has a drug consumption facility. They are behind the bushes, up the closies, in the flat, up the close, when it rains. Basically, they are in bin shelters, bus shelters, wherever, empty places to go, fields, disused buildings, and that is absolutely right. Indeed, we really need to do something about that to help those people. While helping those people, there are questions that have to be asked in regard to, unfortunately, the legality. That is not a political debate, as far as I am concerned, about the constitution. It is not about Westminster refusing to give us this or what is devolved to the Scottish Parliament. It is asking for those powers to ensure that those people can get somewhere safe to inject. Somewhere safe, that is what it is all about. However, I have been asked a couple of questions by constituents and I am just abounding. I want to know myself as well exactly what the situation is in that respect. I have been asked, is it a safer injecting facility that we are talking about here? Is it a heroin assisted treatment facility? That has not been clear to me or to my constituents anyway. One of the largest issues is, for me as well as my constituents, I live in the city centre and represent it, where will it be cited? What are the police involvement in that? I see it as an absolutely health issue, but there are, unfortunately, issues of justice policing. We need to look at that. We cannot hide that part, but we have to look at that. I would ask the minister to sum it up. However, if she could answer those questions, are we looking at a safer injecting facility where people will come with the heroin or the drug to get injected? We need to know that. Are we looking at a heroin assisted treatment centre where people will be provided with the drug? I think that that has got to be made very, very clear. I think that maybe where it will be cited is a bit early yet, but it would be good to find out, if you are talking about Glasgow, exactly whereabouts in the city centre and the police involvement. What have the police got to say about that? How will they be involved in it? I am not sure whether you are taking the intervention or we are just both good with standing up. How do you take an intervention? It is clear that it is looking for Parliament to unite behind and approach the UK Government to permit the pursuance of a safe injecting facility. That is what we do not have the power to do. Can you speak to the microphone, please? I understand that Glasgow health and social care partnership is currently looking at how it can move forward with heroin assisted treatment, but today's debate is around a safe injection facility and safe consumption rooms, because we do not have the power to take that forward in a hearing now. Ms White, my friend will need to do that in a second. No, no, that is clarified that particular point for me, because those questions were not as clear as I could see. The other thing that I wanted to mention was the removal of the clean needle exchange. That was absolutely a disgrace. It would be good to, perhaps, not need it, but it would be good to see more of that. I would like to know more about the police involvement and what will happen if people arrive with drugs and travelling in that type of thing. To me, I am very supportive. We need to do something to alleviate the suffering that those people are going through. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Ms White. Jenny Marra, followed by Rona Mackay. Ms Marra, please. No one can doubt the harm caused to our towns and cities by drug addiction, and nor can we doubt that the current addiction strategy is not working for all of our citizens. In that context, the Scottish Government's willingness to consider radical proposals should be welcomed. However, I would caution, like my colleagues, that, for the minister to begin this process of reforming addiction services with a proposal that the Government cannot enact under its own power, the minister does open herself to the charge that she is playing politics. I am happy to take an intervention from her. I would urge her not to allow this topic to be dragged into yet another of our interminable constitutional fights. I do not want to do a disservice to the private and confidential cause. I had to try to get to a point where we could unite behind a motion, but I did endeavour to ensure that other Opposition parties understood that that was not an attempt to try and find some way to have a constitutional argument, but to respond to the here and now problems that we are facing in Scotland to find a Scottish solution to that, but to recognise that we need some powers, we need the ability to act on that. We do not have those powers, and it is to try and unite behind that to try and allow me to go to the UK Government and say, Parliament is speaking with one voice on this issue. Jenny Marra I thank the Government Minister for clarity, Deputy Presiding Officer. I have been a member of this Parliament for seven years now, and I have to say that we have not been inundated with debates in Government time over Scotland's huge problem with drug abuse and alcohol misuse and the two problems that are connected. That is why I make that point to the minister today. I know that she does not look very pleased about that, but we have said that we will support the motion, but for this to be one of her staging debates when there is a myriad of issues that need to be considered, I think that if she can commit more Government time, more of her own time in this chamber, to discussing those matters, she would give comfort to some of us who want to see more time spent on that. As Anas Sarwar said, the idea of safe injection sites is one that we support, but on the understanding that one facility in one city, indeed, no one idea that it cannot be enough to address the problems that our country faces from drug misuse, because Scotland's drug death rate is a national tragedy, and we ought to our communities to keep an open mind on how to deal with it. In 2016, 867 people in Scotland died of drug-related deaths. In Dundee that same year, there were 38 drug-related deaths, and that is only of the drug-related deaths narrow definition. Other people who have died, who have been using drugs and of alcohol-related causes as well, take that figure much, much, much higher, and I think that we forget that at our peril. Those figures mean that Dundee has the worst drugs death rate in Scotland and the worst in Europe, and in 2016 that is 38, and more families dealing with the death of children, grandchildren and heartbreakingly young children suffering the pain and loss of a parent. It is a scar and a curse on our community in Dundee, and it needs urgent attention, as I have just outlined. On a strategic level, the Scottish Government's plan to develop a new substance misuse treatment strategy is welcome. In Dundee, we have just launched a new drugs commission to look again at how we address addiction in the city. Welcome, though those are, I am a little worried that we are not seeking the fresh ideas and perspectives that we need. Dundee City Council has appointed a member of the board of NHS Tayside to chair the commission. Although I do not impun that person in the chair, I do feel that we need to bring fresh eyes and fresh ideas to Dundee. I wonder whether it is the right thing to ask someone who is responsible for delivering and scrutinising statutory drug services to take that fresh look at the problem, which may include the way that services are delivered and may include reforms to that. I would ask the minister if she would kindly take up this point if she agrees with me that we actually need a fresh chair and fresh eyes to look at this, and if she might address that. I think that we absolutely have to have fresh ideas, because we have a major and specific problem in Dundee. If we are doing things differently there, that contributes to the highest drug's death rate—I am happy to take another intervention—then the commission must be able to identify what we are doing differently and begin the process of reform. I look forward to the parameters and objectives of that commission being published very soon. Any debate on drugs has to take account of the reality of what is going on. Drugs are coming into Dundee and to homes all across Scotland through legal deliveries, through delivery companies and through the Post. They are bought on the internet, they are arriving in shoeboxes. Drugs are being openly sold on Facebook. Facts like those make the landscape more difficult and more complex. A longer series of debates, minister, we could explore and take account of those myriad of issues. As anas Sarwar said for Labour this afternoon, we are happy to support the Government motion, but we would like to see more focus on all the aspects of drug and alcohol misuse, given equal attention as soon as the minister can secure time. I would like to start my contribution to today's debate with a question. If your son, daughter, niece or nephew had a drug addiction problem, would you rather they injected those drugs in a dark alleyway or in safe, clean premises being supervised by medical staff? I would say that that is a bit of a no-brainer. Studies have shown that safe consumption facilities can succeed in reaching long-term drug users who have had no previous contact with treatment services and can be effective in getting some users of the facility into treatment programmes. 100 safe injection rooms across 66 cities in 10 other countries have proved successful, including Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Norway, Australia and Canada, by reducing drug deaths and HIV infection rates. Senior medical professionals have described the soaring HIV infection cases in Glasgow as a public health emergency. As we have heard in 2016, Scotland had 867 deaths from fatal overdoses of drugs, the highest number of deaths from drug overdoses in Europe. Across the UK, 1,573 people died in 2015 as a result of heroin overdose. An on-going outbreak of HIV has occurred in Glasgow, which public injecting and needle sharing has contributed to. By the end of 2016, 78 cases had been linked to the HIV outbreak in Glasgow, with further cases expected in the next few years. 83 per cent of those affected by the outbreak reported that they had injected drugs in public places. The cost of dealing with drug overdose and the health problems associated with addiction in Glasgow has been rising sharply with the increase in drug-related deaths. The cost of drug addiction is mounting for the NHS. With increasing HIV infection rates and an estimated lifetime cost of treating HIV at £360,000 per person, the treatment cost is expected to reach £28 million for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. Therefore, taking into account the use of front-line health services and the cost of dealing with long-term bloodborne infections, the status quo costs the NHS in Glasgow over £29 million. However, it is the human cost that I believe should be the most important factor in the argument for providing safe facilities. Evidence from safe drug consumption facilities operating in other countries have shown reductions in the discarding of needles, reductions in hyres, public injecting and reductions in deaths from overdose, reducing the spread of bloodborne diseases through needle-sharing and discarding. We simply cannot do nothing. We must make changes and make them fast, but the problem is that, despite the Scottish Government agreeing that there is evidence that safer injecting facilities are successful, we cannot legally introduce safe injection rooms. Victoria Atkins, Under Secretary of State for the Home Department, said in January this year, "...we have no intention of introducing drug consumption rooms nor do we have any intention of devolving the United Kingdom policy on drug classification and the way in which we deal with prohibited drugs to Scotland. I hope she changes her mind. Like others, I believe firmly that this is a health issue, not a justice issue." However, we are where we are. The Supervised Drug Consumption Facilities Bill, sponsored by my colleague at Westminster Alison Thoolis and mentioned by Sandra White, seeks to amend key areas of the misuse of Drugs Act 1971 to enable the safe drug consumption facility proposed by Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership to operate legally. Primary legislation from the UK Parliament or devolution of drugs laws to the Scottish Parliament is required to make the necessary changes to the law to prevent service users and staff from prosecution. Alison Thoolis's bill seeks to make the necessary amendments to the misuse of Drugs Act 1971 to enable the SDCF to operate legally. Safe injection facilities are a civilised, grown-up response to a problem that will not go away and is getting worse year on year. Safe injection rooms will reduce problems in the wider community, such as discarded needles, which can easily be picked up by children, but it also reduces risks to users who face increased risk of infection, blood-borne viruses or overdose. The status quo is not an option, so let's learn from good practice in other countries. This is a public health issue and we must do everything we can to deal with it now. Of course it will not solve the wider drug problem in Scotland, but it will save lives now, and I urge you to support the Government's motion. Please excuse my earlier calling error. We actually have Gordon Lindhurst to be followed by Ruth Maguire. What do you want me to do? That was the question that I faced. Deputy Presiding Officer, Scotland tops the drug's death rate in Europe and is breaking records for heroin and methadone hospital admissions. That is a very sad source of national embarrassment, to say the least. The overrepresentation of older drug users aged 35 and over is indicative of the failure under successive Scottish Governments to get people off drugs entirely. Many of these users have prolonged histories of drug abuse. Some may even be old enough to be part of the train-spotting generation, the 80s addicts immortalised in the best-selling Irvine Welsh novel based not far from this Parliament. They have led a life of addiction for decades and, as the Scottish Drugs Forum has warned, current services are unprepared to meet their care and support needs. Although positive signs can be found among younger age groups, there are still worrying statistics that may indicate a reversal in trends, such as those showing that the number of 15-year-olds saying that they had tried ecstasy more than doubled between 2013 and 2015, as well as doubling in cocaine use between those years. Those figures mean that we as a society are failing some of the most vulnerable people, people who are often from more deprived backgrounds, factors such as weak family and social bonds, low employment opportunities and few community resources can all interplay and foster an environment in which drug-taking occurs. Unfortunately, in my work in the criminal courts, I have had much direct experience of what can happen as a result of drugs abuse. The sheer devastation that drug use can cause for individual lives, families and society generally, can be profound. The question that I was asked what do you want me to do was from a judge. It was in a very sad case of a female drug user who had become involved in crime and indeed had lost fingers as a result of her habit and addiction. The only answer that I could give was, please give her another chance. That was not a legal argument but it was all I could say on her behalf. But he did give her another chance, rather than send her to prison. She was typical of many drug users who have ended up in lives of crime due to their addictive habit. The solution is not to give up on these users as if they are beyond help, and it is not to assist them to continue a harmful habit through so-called safe injection facilities. Those same people remain reliant on drugs that prevent them from helping themselves. It stops them from engaging with the opportunities that can take them away from the life that they find themselves in, such as the world of work and mainstream society. Opioid replacement therapies such as prescribed methadone can have a role in taking people off dangerous street drugs, but only if used to progress a user's recovery to eventually take them off drugs altogether. That requires regular engagement with the user to assist them on that road, rather than simply becoming another part of a devastating and dangerous cocktail of drug abuse. Sadly, there are many who have been given the methadone alternative but have subsequently been forgotten about, put to one side without any tangible progress being made towards recovery, sometimes literally for decades. Those are now the failures of this SNP Government, a failure to ensure cheques and balances are in place in the health system to ensure users are recovering. Supervised consumption treatments focus on the circumstances in which drugs are taken rather than the consumption of the drugs themselves, which should be the main focus. That should be to give users the best possible chance of turning their lives around. That is what the SNP Government should focus on, taking them away from drugs altogether. However, a legal basis is already there if the Scottish Government truly wanted to act. The possibility of heroin-assisted treatment, which allows for legally prescribed heroin rather than users bringing in street drugs the content of which is unknown. In that way, under supervision and as a road to recovery, that can already legally be delivered within the framework of existing medicines legislation, as confirmed by the Lord Advocate. It does not require a change in law by the UK Government. Deputy Presiding Officer, Scotland's drug strategy is failing. We need an approach that puts resources into drug prevention and recovery rather than into substitution, which continues the cycle of drug abuse. Ruth Maguire to be followed by Bob Doris. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I believe that problematic drug use is a public health issue, and it should be treated as such. Many people using drugs on the streets are struggling with multiple complex issues. Safe injecting facilities are about ensuring the dignity and safety of some of the most vulnerable people in our communities. They are about saving lives, worth saving. A news report last month on the topic of safe injection facilities shared Jane's story, a 29-year-old in Glasgow who uses in the city centre. She woke up from a fix to find a rat chewing through her arm. She spoke about wanting to die. I have to say that I was genuinely shocked to hear about the reality of Jane's life in 21st century Scotland. It would seem logical that providing safe injection facilities would guard against the tragic situation and provide some safety, as well as an opportunity for additional support and help. Health professionals are on hand to treat overdoses, as well as offer health checks for any physical or mental health problems. Safe injection facilities could help to reverse the alarming drug-related HIV outbreak that we are currently seeing in Glasgow. Almost every new case is a person addicted to heroin. By providing a safe space to inject drugs with clean needles, which would then be disposed of carefully, safe injection facilities are essential to the fight against HIV, a fight that every one of us in this chamber should be committed to. Treating people with dignity and respect is a good first step towards tackling the most profound issue of stigmatisation that surrounds addiction. Instead of leaving people to inject with dirty needles in alleyways, safe injection facilities would treat people like human beings with a health problem rather than criminals. In building relationships and trust with often hard-to-reach or easy-to-ignore people, safe injection facilities also increase the likelihood of people engaging with services that can help to treat their addiction and aid their recovery. I commend some work that is being done in my constituency through the peer mentoring approach that is being delivered by the North Ayrshire ADP in conjunction with NHS Public Health. The initiative sees peer support workers who have lived experience of addiction both supporting individuals undertaking treatment for a blood-borne virus, as well as identifying those at risk. The approach has enhanced the number of people being tested for blood-borne virus and sexual health issues, as well as increasing the number of people commencing treatment. It has reached a number of marginalised individuals, particularly within a homeless or prison setting. I would like to quote one of the people who benefited from the service. The peer workers have given me confidence to deal with everyday life. I feel safe with the peers knowing that they have lived experience. That gives me hope that I can also recover if I do what they did. The power of example is very powerful. I am pleased to tell the chamber that that peer approach won a health and social care innovation award for its good work. It is a really strong example of how finding different ways to engage people can have a properly transformational impact in helping them on their path to recovery. Lastly, safe injection facilities have a really important role to play in getting to a stage where Scotland is no longer the drug death capital of Europe. Although it is important to note that youth drug use is falling, with smoking, alcohol consumption and drug use among young people at record low levels, we cannot ignore Scotland's rate of drug deaths. 2016 saw the highest, I will say. I hear that quite a lot about the number of young people taking drugs and the fall in the number of young people taking drugs. I have to say that I am quite willing to put that on the record. I have grave reservations that those statistics are correct in my experience of going about my communities and listening to the young people in those communities. Do you have those concerns as well? I share those concerns. I have to say that the readily available drugs and the cost of drugs is a reflection that the war on drugs has not worked and that there is a lot to be done. As I say, we cannot ignore Scotland's rate of drug deaths. 2016 saw the highest number of drug-related deaths recorded across Ayrshire and Arran since 2004, following a longer term where gradual upward trend. Sadly, that increase mirrors the picture across Scotland. A substantial number of people who die are not in contact with specialist services at the time of their death, and Ayrshire and Arran's number is slightly higher than the national number of 36 per cent. We must find new ways to reach out to those who are not in contact with existing services. Safe injection facilities is one way that we can do this. Here, however, on the topic of safe injection facilities, we run into what can be a bit of a frequent and frustrating constitutional brick wall, because as so often the case, while we clearly have political will to introduce safe injection facilities in Scotland, we do not have the powers to do so. The Scottish Government's support for safe injection facilities is correct and welcome, but the power to act lies with the UK Government, so I add my voice to those calling for action that is desperately needed, and I urge other members from across the chamber to do the same. Every drug death is an absolute tragedy, not just for the person involved in their family and friends, but for our wider community, and we all have to do everything that we can within our power to change that. The last of the open debate contributions is from Bob Dorris. Thanks very much, Presiding Officer. Can I say the outset that I agree with the introduction of safe injection facilities in Glasgow? I think that the Scottish Government motion before us today is drawn, as we have heard from the minister deliberately in aro, in order to gain, to garner cross-party support where possible. That is actually a strategy within the motion itself, and I am pleased that, with the exception of the Conservatives, it has achieved that cross-party support, and I thank all members across the chamber for the tone of the debate. A bit of progress, Mr Whittle, perhaps. I am also pleased that the debate has sparked a wider debate. Propagated this afternoon, for instance, by Anna Sarwar and Alex Cole-Hamilton over, for example, wider drugs policy and funding, and that is important as well. That should be part of the debate, and I welcome those comments. Why do I support the introduction of safe injection facilities? Well, Glasgow's alcohol and drugs partnership report, taking away the chaos makes compelling reading, and it is a really strong evidence base. With 400 to 500 injecting publicly in Glasgow city centre, they are at risk, and they are vulnerable. However, they can also be challenging, and they can be resistant to help, but let us not forget that as well. However, we must care for them. With 170 drugs-related deaths in Glasgow in 2016 and 806 in across Scotland in the same year, and as we heard just the year before, 47 new HIV diagnoses at that point, the taking away the chaos report has some really strong recommendations for a pilot safe injecting facility to be evaluated. It is overwhelming. I stress that point as well, because if it is evaluated and it does not work, you change the strategy, but the report is compelling and it has to be tried. The facility will not fix the problem, but it will help. I do believe that there will be less fatalities and deaths. I do believe that there will be less needles disposed or discarded unsafely in parks and alleys and backcourts and all the public health dangers inherent in those things happening. I do believe that there will be less infections of HIV and Hep C, and I do believe that there will be more opportunities to engage with a hugely hard-to-reach group. It is that opportunity to engage that I would like to explore further. If we look at the example of engaging with another hard-to-reach group overlapping sometimes, and that is in relation to homelessness, if you look at the Glasgow City Mission winter shelter, the emergency shelter over the winter just there, between December and January, there were 356 people who presented at that point. That was a 5 per cent increase. If you look at the Glasgow City Mission website, it would say in relation to that that conversations took place throughout the night and into the morning between staff and guests to ensure that we are doing all that we can to help guests to move forward and to settle accommodation and to access health and other services. A lot of those guests will not have presented on the radar of social services before. That will be the first opportunity to engage with services to help some of those people. Some of the results were that the majority of those at the city mission after three nights were given more stable accommodation rather than the emergency shelter. 94 of them were referred to government law centre with specific help in relation to accessing benefits and 111 of them were signposted on to the NHS at the Hunter Street nursing facility. Real help for people who were off the radar of society and vulnerable and chaotic because they had somewhere to go. That is precisely the model that the safe injecting facility is trying to demonstrate in relation to some of the most vulnerable drug users that we have in our society. There is a false debate between abstinence and safe injecting. Even abstinence strategies—this is vital and important—reel apps are a normal part of recovery. Most people recover long-term relapse on several occasions. How do we support people from the relapse and the chaotic lifestyles? The need places such as safe injecting facilities to re-engage with services. That is important. I would happily admit that not everything is happening in the world of the road to recovery and the Government. I am sure that we will be engaging to improve things. I do hear in my constituency about the long-term use of methadone without necessarily moving forward into a sustainable recovery. I do hear concerns in relation to the monies that are made by certain pharmacies in relation to the business model around supplying methadone to vulnerable people. I am just repeating the concerns that I hear in my constituency. We have heard today, for example, in relation to Alex Cole-Hamilton, in relation to budgets. What I would say in relation to budgets is that we have a new budget process in the Scottish Parliament starting this year—a much earlier constructive positive engagement. Before the numbers are even known for the budgets that have been set, I think that the challenge to all politicians, opposition parties and the Government is to have constructive positive discussions around that to see what budgets should look like. I am not saying this to be defensive. Let's not be hung up in numbers, because the whole point of the budget process is not just about inputs but about outcomes in relation to all those vulnerable people. I apologise that I do not have time. Can I finish off by saying that the Conservatives were saying that safe injecting facilities were about writing off a forgetting about the most vulnerable people in society. It is quite the opposite. I think that Annie Wells said that, and we can look back and look at the official report. I think that you will find that it is quite the opposite. It will only be 400 to 500 people in the streets of Glasgow, but there are human beings as well, and they need help and support, and this Parliament should unite to reach out and to try and help them. I move to the closing speeches. I think that I have reached a new height in the field of peer review in my career as a parliamentarian when, in the margins of this meeting, Adam Tomkins described my amendment as being completely bonkers. That is quite a usual Tory response to radical change supported by a weight of empirical international evidence. Thank you. I welcome this motion and it is with it stabling under the Ministry of Public Health, because drugs policy for too long has been rooted in criminal justice, both in our minds and in the public policy that we have made in this place. That misstep has cost us space in our prisons, its cost us police time, its cost us untapped revenue for the exchequer and it has cost us lives. We have the highest rate of drug-related deaths in Western Europe. That is an invidious title to hold, so I welcome this debate and I hope for more like it. There is a suggestion that the minister, in her intervention to me during my speech that the ADP funding was actually at its highest level yet, and that is risable. I wonder whether workers, statisticians, third sector stakeholders all drew an inescapable corollary between that 23 per cent cut that we have heard about several times in several speeches today, the closure of services that led to and the 23 per cent increase in deaths that followed last year. While I thank her for this motion, I wonder if she will take the opportunity by intervention right now if she will to state on the record that she accepts that, while we recognise that drug deaths are going up across the country over the last 10 years, that a cut in funding to those services was not an appropriate response and that she also pledged to protect those vital budgets going forward. Minister, I am quite happy to take an intervention on that point if you would like to make it. Aileen Campbell I think that I outlined that our commitment has been borne out with the funding that we have put into ADPs and that the £20 million that we have earmarched through this current budget will enable us to do more to ensure that this new strategy will be delivered with impact and to ensure that we can reverse some of the things that I think we share concerns about. Alex Cole-Hamilton I am grateful to the minister for those comments and I look forward to working with her to see them realised. Annie Wells, in her speech for the Conservatives, called for a radical overhaul of our approach to drugs and indeed the drug strategy, and that was echoed by Brian Whittle, but it failed to recognise that this drugs policy was initiated by her own party as price for Tory votes to support SNP budgets in the early days of the first SNP administration. It does need a whole systems approach. I absolutely agree, but it strikes me that the conservative approach to this is abstinence or incarceration. Gordon Lindhurst asks us what we want him to do. Well, Gordon, changing the record would be a good start, Brian. I am afraid that I must make some progress. I do want that whole systems approach. I want a whole system review, but that starts from fundamentally different first principles than the Conservatives would ascribe. Those first principles, which recognise those hard brass tacks, are well articulated by Anna Sarwar in his opening speech, which delineate our very unique and destructive relationship with illegal substances in this country, which put us ahead of so many European countries in terms of mortality. My party starts not with that fruitless pursuit of abstinence or either strangling the world heroine supply as Maurice Corry bafflingly suggested. It is their widespread use and their legal status that is the problem, but also how we deal humanely with the people that use them. Alison Johnstone made an excellent speech and referenced the report taking away the chaos in NHS Glasgow, which was also referenced by Bob Dorris. That link between vulnerability, social deprivation and substance use is absolutely vital to the debate going forward. Alison Johnstone rightly referenced the closure of the needle exchange at Central Station, which is another retrograde policy step that we need to be sure to prevent going forward. The theme about environment was also taken forward by Emma Harper in her fascinating description about scientific experiments. There may be much about my amendment, which members find instinctively uncomfortable. I get that, but I can suggest to them that they find themselves on the wrong side of both history and empirical international evidence, which shows that both safe injecting rooms lead to harm reduction. Brian Whittle expressed caution and was concerned about the lack of evidence in that, but there is 30 years of evidence out there, and there is also evidence for heroin-assisted therapies, which I intervened on Neil Findlay for as well. There is also evidence for decriminalisation and a more liberal approach to drugs use on a more wholesale scale. We have heard the example of Portugal. German writer Sebastian Maranholo said that the legalisation of marijuana is not a dangerous experiment. It is the prohibition of marijuana that was the experiment, and it has failed dramatically with millions of victims all around the world. Nowhere is that more evident than in the case of my constituent, Murray Gray. Murray's mum, Karen, is tenacious, and I am proud to know her. I am looking forward to our meeting with the cabinet secretary. I hope very much that she will be able to offer Karen some help. I would like to finish by thanking members for what has been a robust and interesting debate. Some heartfelt local examples from Claire Hawke, Fulton MacGregor and many others underscore the human reality that unites the chamber. We all want to reduce the harm that drugs bring to our constituents and their prevalence in our communities. I finish by echoing the call of Jenny Marra for more Government time and, indeed, legislation for us to take this debate forward. Daniel Johnson, up to six minutes, please. I would like to reflect on the debate by highlighting Bob Dorris' contribution, because, in many ways, it went to the heart of what we are trying to do. I think that Bob Dorris made a compelling argument about why we need to look at drug safe injecting rooms, but he was also frank about some of the wider consequences in the policy area. He also thanked or welcomed the fact that we need a broad debate. I think that that, in a sense, neatly sums up what we need to do. While this is a debate that has been focused on a particular policy, and I understand the minister's desire to have this debate to look at that particular policy, I think that it is impossible not to look at the wider implications, because this is an area where there are connections right the way across policy areas, and it is an issue that impacts on so many other issues, such as poverty, exclusion and deprivation. Turning firstly to the debate that we have had today, it has been an honest, frank and times emotional debate, and it had to be so. I think that the minister set out very clearly the case for looking at safe injection rooms, and that was a case that was reflected by the comments from people across the chamber, such as Alex Cole-Hamilton, Claire Hawke and others. We are looking at international experience such as that of Australia, Spain and Switzerland. We have to do that. We have to have that frank, honest assessment of what works and how we can actually make a difference. Indeed, I very much appreciate Fulton MacGregor's contribution as well in this regard, because he had that balanced front-line view, looking at it as an option, but with the frank assessment about what happens when people are on methadone. Again, the use of methadone as a therapy is something that came back to time and time again, and something that I think that the chamber should reflect on. Let me be very clear that Labour will support the motion tonight, because I think that the case has been made about why we need to look at this, because safe injection rooms provide a clean, safe facility, but, importantly—and I think that this is an important point that the minister made—it is about connecting individuals to other surfaces. I think that that is why this needs to be examined, looked at and thoroughly investigated, as well as the community benefits that it may have, but fundamentally this needs to be evidence-led. I would also like to reflect on Annie Wells' contribution, because I thought that it was powerful, and I think that we need to engage with some of the issues that she raised. First of all, it was a contribution that was grounded in personal experience, and it is that personal experience that brings home just how serious this issue is. I think that she was right to question whether or not the policies around methadone have been working. I think that many people have talked about people being part of methadone, and we need to be frank about whether that is happening and to tackle that. However, I do not think that this is either or, and I certainly do not think that this is some policy that is necessary about giving up, and it certainly must not be so. However, I would like to reflect briefly on Sandra White, who asked about what kind of facilit