[matthewmacleod]

This is a particularly active political issue too – drug policy is at present a reserved matter of the UK government, which means the devolved government of Scotland is missing some important tools they could use to help deal with the issue.

This something that the pro-independence Scottish government are making quite a bit of noise about now; some of it is probably opportunism, but Scotland's drug culture is different enough that it certainly seems to require different tools. In particular, there is pressure among some people for the introduction of safe drug consumption facilities, with the idea being that this keeps people off the street, with access to medical care, in the system, and with support to help them recover. These are currently prohibited in the UK.

We'll see what happens over the next few years, of course. The current UK government is unlikely to be giving any concessions.

[cstross]

A secondary issue is also policing culture.

As a cost-saving measure due to Westminster-imposed spending cuts, the Scottish government merged all six regional Scottish police forces into a single force, Police Scotland, in 2013.

This involved a game of musical chairs at senior rank as posts were merged, so the senior officers with the best resumes (most people working for them, biggest budgets) ended up getting the plum jobs. In practice, this meant that Police Scotland lost its distinctive regional specialities and became dominated by senior cops from the former Strathclyde police force (i.e. Glasgow). This force was culturally presbyterian and prone to a puritanical zero-tolerance culture, which they exported to the rest of the nation, damaging local initiatives such as Edinburgh's unofficially sanctioned brothels (attacks on sex workers spiked) and setting relations with the LGBT community back by a decade. They also clamped down on tolerance of cannabis, which didn't help, and were notoriously unsupportive of harm reduction initiatives such as shooting galleries.

Police Scotland seems to be improving these days as they re-learn a lot of hard-won lessons about how to do policing in places that aren't the west end of Glasgow, but the combination of an intolerant, harsh policing culture and Theresa May's Home Office calling the shots on drugs was utterly toxic.

[arethuza]

The only time I've encountered someone who displayed open sectarian bigotry was a (distant) relative who happened to be in the Strathclyde police force!

Mind you this was going back a bit (1980 or so) but someone who ranted about the evils of Catholicism to anyone in earshot probably didn't get many counter arguments from their colleagues.

[hogFeast]

Sectarian bigotry is still common. In fact, bigotry in general is still common. What has changed is the self-righteousness and the change in focus onto groups that "deserve it" (i.e. the English, Jews to name two of the most common...not including sectarian obv, as that is just so prevalent).

And I know someone who used to work as a diversity officer (they ran seminars on diversity) for the Police: bigotry runs very deep unf. The slightly bizarre twist recently is that the Police now spends a lot of time on hate crime (i.e. chasing easy arrests on Twitter)...poacher turn gamekeeper I suppose (and again, the self-righteousness is utterly incomprehensible).

[shellac]

The UK used to prescribe heroin for addicts, which I understand inspired the Swiss treatment of addicts. Rolling that back as part of the war on addiction seems to have been counterproductive in terms of overall health.

[kenneth]

The Swiss experiment was a massive disaster. Wish we had never done it, and it certainly took a few decades to clean up its effect on parts of Zürich. It attracted junkies from all over Europe and with it brought crime and violence. I spent a few years going to primary school near the epicenter of it in the late 90s. The number of times I saw people shooting up in broad daylight right in front of my school… is shocking. Even more shocking were the parks littered in used needles. Parks kids would play in… can you imagine what can happen? They'd be cleaned up on the regular, and staff would literally have bags full of used needles!

It was pretty traumatic to see, not that I really understood it as a kid.

It was way worse than the streets of San Francisco today, which are an absolute disaster too!

Good riddance, getting rid of that "treatment" was the best thing we ever did.

[derriz]

I don’t think the parent is talking about the heroin free-for-all experiment in the Landesmuseum park but rather the supervised injection clinics which continue to be a component of Swiss drug treatment policy. Compared to other cities of similar size, it’s rare to see actual junkies in Swiss cities.

[kgwgk]

https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/extern/storytelling/needletraum...

[kenneth]

Great story, thanks for sharing.

[daedalus_f]

I don't think direct heroin-assisted treatment has been commonplace in the UK for a long time. You need an individual license from the Home Office for diamorphine prescription [1], whereas the opiate replacement drugs can be prescribed by any medical prescriber (though in practice this tends to be only done by specialists and some GPs).

[1] - https://www.gov.uk/guidance/controlled-drug-domestic-licence...