WESTMINSTER Policing Minister Kit Malthouse denies that drug consumption rooms can play a part in the drug crisis in Scotland, or that they can be allowed in any Scottish city ("Minister: Health workers could face charges over drug room death", The Herald, February 28). Yet trials/pilot schemes for addicts to inject heroin have previously been allowed in London, Brighten and Darlington in England. There is a scheme running right now in Middlesbrough, the UK’s first “Heroin Assisted Treatment” (HAT) programme where addicts can inject diamorphine twice a day. Again, that is in England.
Why was none of this put to Mr Malthouse by journalists in Scotland? Is his objection to schemes like this in Scotland based on Unionist oneupmanship, rather than finding a treatment?
GR Weir, Ochiltree.
THE Scottish Government's support for a drug consumption facility of dubious merit in Glasgow and concomitant refusal to fund successful total abstinence treatment regimes as provided by the Jericho Society and others smacks of the ideological arrogance not untypical of this ruling administration.
Duncan Macintyre, Greenock.
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