But the Reverend has noticed a difference in recent years.
Methadone was being prescribed as an alternative for ‘recovering’ addicts fifteen years ago in his north Glasgow parish, he says. But efforts were being made to wean the drug-dependent off the sickly green liquid heroin substitute.
“Back then, people were proud to tell you that while they had been on a 70ml dose last week, they were now down to 65 or 60ml. It was very common for people to be on a reducing prescription.
“But there has been such a move over the intervening years towards harm reduction, now nearly everyone I see is on a maintenance dose,” he sighs.
“There are 22,000 people in Scotland receiving a substitute prescription and my understanding is that for most of them the dose they are on isn’t reducing.”
This is one of the reasons Rev Matthews agreed to chair a major new inquiry into the harm caused by drugs in Scotland – and what can be done to address it. The inquiry, which launches today, will be under the auspices of Scottish Training on Drugs and Alcohol (Strada) an agency which sits within the centre for drug misuse research at Glasgow University.
It has gathered a notable array of experts, social policy ‘thinkers’ and representatives of those ordinary members of the public affected in one way or another by illegal drug misuse.
The inquiry team itself includes Sheriff Lindsay Wood; Stuart Patrick, CEO of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce; Rowdy Yates of the University of Stirling; and John Carnochan of the Strathclyde Police Violence Reduction Unit.
Advisors include Professor Neil McKeganey of the University of Glasgow; Dr Laurence Gruer of NHS Health Scotland; Dr Andrew Fraser, head of health at the Scottish Prison Service; and Rev Andrew McLellan, who counts Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and Chief Prisons Inspector among his past jobs.
Nevertheless it is tempting to ask what it can deliver that numerous previous reports and inquiries into the same issue have failed to provide.
Rev Matthews says it will seize the moment – with the Scottish Government already having expressed its desire for a new ‘recovery-focused’ approach to drug use.
The inquiry will follow this to its conclusion, he says. What does that agenda actually mean?
“We really need to map the landscape through from harm reduction to abstinence. Do we have the services at present that are capable of producing recovery? I would suggest the answer is no.”
The drug users he sees now sometimes find that doctors are unwilling to consider reducing their methadone dose, he claims.
He is not pre-judging the issue and believes methadone and other substitute prescriptions have a part to play. “I can understand that if a GP has got someone stabilised, the last thing they want to do is risk letting go of that, potentially.
“But recovery is not going to be possible for a drug users unless they are on some sort of conveyor, rather than permanently going into the local chemist taking 100ml of methadone every day of their life.”
There are an estimated 51,000 heroin addicts in Scotland and 22,000 are on substitute medication. We don’t know where the other 29,000 are, Rev Matthews claims. Similarly, for those who do recover from drug addiction, we don’t know enough about how.
“Through this inquiry we want to almost freeze frame through people’s lives and find out what got people in to drugs, and what helps some of them get out again.”
The other factor which encouraged Rev Matthews to commit to leading the inquiry was the degree of buy-in he believes it has achieved politically.
It has cross party support, he says and he believes there is a commitment from government to take its findings on board.
Joy Barlow, Strada director and one of the main movers in setting up the inquiry concurs with this. Government is looking for a new approach, but so are the families of drug users and even the addicted themselves, she says.
Inquiry members include recovered drug users, family members of those who are still in the grip of heroin and representatives of agencies who currently work with them.
“I am wholeheartedly behind the Government’s strategy as set out in last year’s Road to Recovery,” Barlow says. “But a lot more needs to be explored. There is a need for innovation in terms of support for people who are looking for something other than a medicalised response to the problem.
“I also thought that the provision of hope and aspiration for individuals, families and communities had a moral ring to it.
This is an opportunity to have some forward-looking creative thinking in a way which is independent and will assist and inform government.”
We have to ask searching questions about the rising drug death figures and about why Scotland has manifestly different and worse problems than other comparable nations in Europe, Barlow adds.
The biggest question will be to what extent this independent inquiry can avoid the factionalism which pervades the drug work sector in Scotland.
The new emphasis on recovery can be seen as dismissing the efforts of those who have been engaged in harm reduction work in recent years.
Some are angered at the implication that they do not care about the recovery of their clients, and stress that harm reduction remains important.
Rev Matthews doesn’t dispute that. But he argues that there has to be a way forward from the position where so many seem to be parked on substitute medication, and we have a paucity of options for what to do next.
He thinks more can be done for his parishioners, and for addicts across the country, or he wouldn’t be involved, he says.
“I don’t think anyone would deny that a lot of drug users are in a kind of holding pattern (on Methadone),” he adds. “They are almost like planes at Heathrow. But planes eventually get a chance to land.”
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