I HAVE looked in vain through the SNP election manifesto to see what the party is saying about one of Scotland’s biggest health problems, drug misuse, and I am alarmed that I cannot see any reference to it. I do commend the SNP and other parties though for at last accepting that the gross underfunding of mental health services, especially for children and young people, is one that must be a priority in the next Scottish Parliament.

What the SNP and others have not come to terms with is that there is an absolute connection between our nation’s mental health record, which is that one in four adults and children are now likely to suffer from mental health problems in their lifetime, and their drug use. There is one massive time-bomb waiting to explode, and one that will cripple the NHS unless we can reverse the trend.

Having worked for decades with young people with drug, alcohol and mental health problems, I have no doubt that the connection between people self-medicating on drugs to cope with life’s stresses is something that our government is not taking seriously enough.

Our stressed-up and depressed children are using all the same drugs that adults do, to try to cope with the difficulties of modern living. Smoking may be on the wane but for decades people believed that it calmed them down, when in fact it stressed them up. Vaping has come along and claims to be a safer way to use the highly addictive drug nicotine, but in reality it is trapping ex-smokers in a nicotine habit. People of all ages are drinking well over the recommended limits to forget their problems for a few hours, but our prisons and mental health wards are full of people who soon found that alcohol, for many, makes them even more depressed.

Five years ago the range of illicit drugs in common use included around 2,000 substances that we knew quite a lot about, so we could offer some advice and support to those who become addicted. Today, there are new drugs hitting the streets every month called Legal Highs, and we know almost nothing about them, so can only sit back and wait to see what damage will ensue.

There is serious doubt about the current drug laws. Many of us feel that they are no longer fit for purpose. Yet only two of the political parties campaigning in this election, the Greens and the Liberals have shown enough concern to want to open up public debate on legalisation or decriminalisation of drugs. Why is the SNP putting its head in the sand and hoping that this problem will just go away? I would like the SNP to understand, that stressed children, self-medicating to solve their problems, became stressed adults, doing the very same thing. But adults have much more money than kids, so they can afford a lot more of their drugs of choice.

This problem won’t go away, but it most certainly will be the cause of hundreds of thousands more of us developing mental health problems. Time to open up the debate and take this issue seriously.

Max Cruickshank,

13 Iona Ridge, Hamilton.