SCOTS author and activist Kevin Williamson has angrily denounced the culture of silence that continues to surround the issue of drug deaths in Scotland.
Williamson made his comments as he chaired a session at yesterday's Edinburgh International Book Festival with the Glasgow-born author, Johann Hari, whose latest book, Chasing the Scream, features personal stories from the international war on drugs.
The event heard that there were two drugs-related deaths in Scotland every day.
The recently-released National Records of Scotland report disclosed that 613 people died as a result of drugs in 2014.
Williamson acknowledged that his analogy might be "flippant" and went on: "If four or five hundred people were dying every day, working in the Scottish Parliament, after maybe about 10 deaths on consecutive days, people would start saying 'What the hell is going on here? People are dying every single day'. They would come in the next day and there would be another person dead in the Scottish Parliament.
"But it's not. It's invisible people. You don't see it on the news. It's no longer reported. It's just a statistic that comes out every year. It has been dehumanised and made invisible. It frustrates me that it is not taken up as a big issue in Scotland."
He said he had campaigned for 10 years on drug issues "and did everything I could and I found myself totally isolated at the end of that, and disheartened, because the two groups of people I couldn't get to speak out were addicts ... and people who worked with addicts.
"You were isolated, you just became this kind of nutty left-winger or nutty right-winger or some libertarian wanting the drugs laws changed.
"I don't feel that has changed in Scotland," Williamson added. "I feel it has actually got worse. Can anyone remember the last time there was a big debate in the Scottish press on drug problems? It's getting worse, deaths are increasing every year. It's not happening. There is a culture of silence."
Hari argued that the drug war "can only continue because we dehumanise the people at its heart, whether they are drug users, drug addicts, drug dealers, cops, the people who live in the supply-route countries."
Williamson, who is from Thurso, referred to the "horrific" drugs culture there - "it now has drugs terrorism, it has gangs, it has organised violence and intimidation, and that is in a little town of less than 10,000 people.
"This is dotted all around the Highlands. It's not a city problem any more. Anyone who thinks it's a city problem in Scotland is delusional. It has gone to everywhere in Scotland."
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