A senior Scottish police officer has called for a radical change to tackling drugs misuse, suggesting the criminal justice system was “probably deleterious” as it pushed people into the more harmful environment of prison.

Steve Johnson, Assistant Chief Constable at Police Scotland, suggested Scottish politicians should have the “confidence and courage” to change their approach and see drug abuse as a health crisis rather than a criminal justice issue.

Giving evidence to the Commons Scottish Affairs Committee, he said the current system for handling drug-users was like a "hamster wheel".

He told MPs: "It's just a matter of time. They come through the custody door, they get processed through the criminal justice system, go in through the sheriffs' courts, they go into prison.

"Of those people who come out, 11 per cent die within the first month of having been released, according to the statistics. But police officers get used to this carousel, this sense of hopelessness."

Mr Johnson recounted how drug-related deaths had doubled in three years; from 539 in 2015 to 1,067 in 2018.

Pressed on how the Home Office approached drug policy, he said it felt “very punitive" and suggested there was a "clear tension" between upholding the law as it stood and adhering to a police officer's first duty: to protect life.

The senior police officer noted how currently there were more than 61,000 problematic drug-users in Scotland, a number which was on the increase, and for the majority of them the end-result would be death.

He pointed out how the law said the mere possession of a tiny amount of a substance should lead to a warning or an arrest.

“That puts people into custody. That potentially exposes them to more drugs or different drugs in the prison system and puts them back out into society that, unfortunately for most of them, will mean they are going to die.”

Mr Johnson went on: "The criminal justice process is probably deleterious; it's actually pushing people into a place where there is more harm.

"Whilst it might be statistically a criminal justice outcome, it doesn't seem to me to present a good social justice[outcome] in terms of rehabilitation and putting people back out into society," he added.

Meanwhile, Jim Duffy, a retired Strathclyde Police officer who now works for Law Enforcement Action Partnership UK, told the evidence session that the war on drugs was "completely lost and unwinnable," if MPs continued with the same approach to tackling the issue of drugs misuse.

"The way forward is not to follow the current Misuse of Drugs Act, which has been in place for 48 years and has been an out-and-out failure. We need a radical rethink and we need a change,” he declared.

Mr Duffy argued society needed to take the issue of drugs misuse away from criminals and “legislate and control".

He added: "Lives are being saved all over the world, in Canada and America, where they've legalised it in certain states; there aren't the same number of fatalities.”

Martin Powell, from the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, argued that allowing the creation of drugs consumption rooms, such as that proposed in Glasgow, in a “really cautious, piloted way,” could allow Scotland to explore whether deregulation could be beneficial.

"So, no big bangs, no sudden shocks to the system; a very careful, cautious, evidence-based approach," he added.