SCOTLAND’S drugs minister has defended the use of police warnings for people caught with heroin and cocaine amid claims of decriminalisation by the backdoor.

“We can’t arrest our way out of a drugs death crisis,” Angela Constance said this morning.

It followed Tory criticism of a change in the way people are to be handled for “simple possessions offences” involving Class A drugs.

The Lord Advocate, Dorothy Bain QC, told Holyrood yesterday that the police will now be allowed to issue warnings rather than automatically refer people for prosecution.

Ms Bain insisted this was not decriminalising hard drugs, and the police would still be able to refer people to prosecutors, and would still arrest drug dealers. 

However the Tories said the move meant the “de facto criminalisation” of drugs such as heroin, crack cocaine, crystal meth, ecstasy, LSD, and magic mushrooms.

Possession of Class A drugs is punishable by up to seven years in jail.

The expectation now in Scotland is that the police will divert more people into health and support services, rather than the justice system.

When police officers were advised by the Crown Office in 2019 that they could issue warnings for possession of Class B and C drugs, such as barbiturates and cannabis, the number of diversions soared from 57 in 2017-18 to 1000 in 2020-21.

Campaigners and opposition parties at Holyrood welcomed the move as a shift towards treating drug abuse more as a health issue than one of criminality.

Describing the change as a “smart use of the law”, Ms Constance told BBC Radio Scotland it would be at the discretion of police whether a warning was issued.

She stressed this would only be an option in cases of possession for individual use, not where someone is suspected of being involved in supplying drugs to others.

She also hailed the move as “very significant” as Scotland aims to reduce drugs deaths – which reached a record 1,339 in 2020.

She said the change had been welcomed by all parties at Holyrood “with the exception of the Conservatives”.

She said: “There is a recognition that as we embark on our national mission to reduce drug related deaths in Scotland, we need as much as we can within our powers towards a public health response. I think the Lord Advocate’s statement was very significant.

“In her first statement to Parliament as the new Lord Advocate, she recognised the extent of the public health emergency that we face in Scotland and acknowledged the ability of police and prosecutors to help with that.

“The Lord Advocate was speaking about possession only. I would of course as the drugs minister argue that people caught in possession of heroin should be supported into treatment because we can’t arrest our way out of a drugs death crisis, and we need to be reducing demand for drugs as well as supply.

“This is of course a discretionary power by the police.

“But it is an example of how we can tailor our criminal justice system to be more proportionate and be more timely and a more smart use of the law.”

Tory MSP Jamie Greene said: “The answer to our drugs crisis is more access to treatment, not this de-facto decriminalisation by the back door of drugs that are the scourge of our streets and our society.

“There is a fine line between drug possession and drug dealing. This dangerous decision will benefit drug dealers by making it more difficult to stop the supply. Police officers will be put in an impossible situation."