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Parliament Endorses New Drugs Strategy
04/06/2008
Ministers are determined to turn the concept of recovery into reality after Parliament voted through Scotland's first national drugs strategy since devolution.
Speaking afterwards Mr Ewing said:
"With this strategy we move Scotland into a new phase in the fight against drug misuse. In order to make the most of the substantial resources invested in tackling drugs we need to place more emphasis on working with drug users to help them achieve recovery.
"This concept of recovery is central to our new strategy. It is the principle that more than just reducing risk and harm, services should support people to move on, towards a drug-free life, as active and contributing members of society.
"Recovery can also get us beyond some of the sterile debates of the past - about whether abstinence or harm reduction is the best hope for drug users, as if there were a contradiction between the two. In fact, recovery leaves space for both: abstinence will work best for some people, just as substitute prescriptions - such as methadone - will be an essential part of recovery for others.
"From the training of future health professionals to the information available to parents and grandparents, the strategy puts in place the foundations for a sustained drive to recover lives and reduce the social and economic costs of drugs on our society.
"We want to change not just the delivery of drug support services but the very culture that underpins them. We want to challenge the culture of arrogance within organised crime that they and their assets are beyond the arm of the law and challenge any culture of fatalism among drug users that recovery is impossible.
"We now need to focus on outcomes and turning recovery into reality. The strategy sets out a programme of action to achieve this. We are working with partners to reform how drugs services are planned, commissioned and delivered, within the wider context of public sector reforms, to ensure that they deliver recovery focused outcomes. We will also establish a new national support capacity to help support local partners deliver the recovery approach in drug services. We will embed recovery within training and workforce development."
Speaking during this afternoon's debate in Parliament Mr Ewing said:
"Clearly implementation and delivery of the strategy is key. As we have developed the strategy in partnership, it is essential that we too deliver it in partnership.
"We owe it to every person in Scotland who has ever been affected by drug use to work together to support practitioners who will be working on the ground to implement the strategy.
"Core to delivery is the reform of the way that drug services are planned, commissioned and delivered. To make recovery a reality, local partners need to ensure that the appropriate range of services are in place locally and regionally.
"We have set up an expert delivery reform group to look at future delivery arrangements. The continued work of this group will determine how exactly performance management and accountability arrangements for Alcohol and Drug Action Teams will function within the wider context of Single Outcome Agreements and NHS accountability structures.
"Recovery is only one aspect of the strategy. We are also taking action across all arms of Government to prevent drug use in the longer term. In particular, parents can play a crucial role in educating their family. But often they feel that they do not have accurate and credible information and that is why last week we began providing copies of the Know the Score publication "Drugs - What Every Parent Should Know" to every family in Scotland.
"The strategy also places a renewed emphasis on early intervention to protect children at risk of parental substance misuse; and sets out action by the police, prisons and criminal justice services to make our communities stronger and safer places to live and work.
"The Government is committed to zero tolerance of drug use and trafficking in prisons. We are working with the Scottish Prison Service to ensure that there are robust measures in place to prevent drugs getting into our prisons and effective treatment for prisoners with drug problems to help them on the road to recovery."
Last Thursday Scotland's new national drugs strategy: 'The Road to Recovery: a New Approach to Tackling Scotland's Drug Problem' was unveiled.
£94m over the next three years from the justice portfolio alone is being made available to specifically tackle drug use. This represents a 14% increase in funding by 2010-11. But it is not the whole picture. Additional monies are also spent on tackling drug use from other general budgets provided by Government. The work of Audit Scotland will investigate the scale and effectiveness of drugs expenditure.