SENIOR Swedish politicians and drugs experts are to meet with the Conservative leader Annabel Goldie and a leading drugs professor to discuss how Scotland can adopt Sweden's successful zero-tolerance approach to the problem.
Members of the European Council Against Drugs (Ecad), politicians and civil servants will hear a presentation from Neil McKeganey, director of Glasgow University's Centre for Drugs Misuse Research, about Scotland's crisis tomorrow before meeting Goldie at Holyrood on Tuesday.
McKeganey, who has long maintained the government's harm reduction policies are failing Scotland's 50,000 heroin abusers, believes Sweden's hardline approach to illegal drugs could be used in Scotland.
He told the Sunday Herald: "The Swedes cast drug use very clearly as something which shouldn't occur, as opposed to our government's position that we can only reduce the harmful effects of illegal drugs. Every other European country has simultaneously tried to reduce the harm of continued drug use and the scale of the problem. They have high-quality treatment available immediately to all those who need it, but we have incredibly meagre residential rehabilitation resources."
McKeganey said the General Register Office for Scotland's recent statistics - showing that deaths linked to drug abuse rose by 25% last year, with 421 deaths, 85 more than in 2005 - proved that government policies have failed. The highest previous figure was in 2002, when 382 died.
Sweden has only 28,000 addicts among its population of nine million, and that figure includes all drug users. It had a tolerant approach in the mid-1960s, but reversed its policy when drugs became an epidemic in the 1970s, according to Ecad director Tomas Hallberg.
Hallberg said: "We had the epidemic before many other countries, so we've had longer to cope with it. It shouldn't be controversial for people like Professor McKeganey to talk about the difficulties of making treatment easier for addicts."
Hallberg added that Sweden's biggest problem was tempting addicts to take up their places at the treatment centres, funded by regional governments.
Goldie, whose party has pledged £100m to fund treatments, said: "Scotland has suffered far too long from an epidemic of drug abuse, and I am trying to lead the call for a new political will to tackle this head-on for the sake of addicts, their families and society."
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