THERE might, in other circumstances, be a case for resisting the Lord Advocate’s decision that police warnings rather than prosecutions could be appropriate for those in possession of Class A drugs, or at least for rigorous investigation and debate.

However, we – in common with most opposition parties, the police, health services and those concerned with drugs policy – believe that it should be welcomed, precisely because Scotland’s drug problem is a national scandal of catastrophic proportions.

The fact that our drug death figures are by far the worst in Europe and, per capita, more than three times as bad as the next highest countries or of the other UK nations may be an indictment of previous policy failures, but it justifies the Government adopting an approach that treats drug use primarily as a national health emergency – for that is what it undoubtedly is.

With 1,339 drug-related deaths recorded last year, and 722 in the first half of this year, it is long past time for a decisive approach to a problem that has deep-seated and complicated causes. These are connected with multi-generational poverty, family breakdown, and previous cuts to treatment services. Simply tackling them as crime, though it is both a contributing factor to and a by-product of addiction, is in the face of those figures less urgent than doing something about death, misery and social corrosion. The approach that has been adopted up to this point has, self-evidently, been an out-and-out failure.

The fact that a major shift is now being proposed undermines previous Government protestations that its hands were tied by UK policy, and its refusal to accept the harm done by its own cuts, especially when our record was so much poorer. But if there is real commitment to bring about change, however belated, there are cautious grounds for optimism.

As addiction charity specialists have already pointed out, though, police warnings and “diversion” into treatment rather than prosecution are not on their own a “silver bullet”; the SNP Government will need to ensure that this policy meets its aim of shifting the focus to harm prevention and recovery.

To do so will need the provision of vastly improved provision and resources directed not only at frontline health, recovery and rehabilitation, but also in schools, social and community services. It will need a real commitment to changing a toxic culture, and a relentless focus on transforming conditions – everything from housing and health services to welfare, education, basic sanitation and fundamental attitudes and expectations – in neighbourhoods overrun by this blight.

There are positive models in the experience of countries that have overcome serious problems, such as Portugal, from which we can learn. There are also lessons from the Government’s genuine successes, such as the Violence Reduction Unit, which proved transformational after shifting from a traditional policing initiative towards a more empathetic public health model.

There should still be robust policing of the criminal gangs who profit from the misery of the drugs trade; the Lord Advocate expressly rejected the description of these plans by the Scottish Conservatives, the only party opposing them, as “de facto criminalisation”. A more empathetic approach, that recognises users primarily as victims, will be effective only if there are continued efforts to prevent supply, and dealers are pursued to the fullest extent of the law.

While the line between use and supply is often blurred at street level, the police and prosecution services are now being given discretion to tackle the problem in a way that they – who have direct experience – judge most effective. And they are being given an overarching approach by Government policy that aims to treat this in a more holistic way that has proven effective against violent crime here, and dramatically reduced drug problems elsewhere.

Nothing in this announcement prevents continued pursuit of criminals or the use of the courts. But given the abject failure of a system that has previously been limited by relying mostly on those levers, it offers possible improvement – if, and only if, changes in policing are matched by an equally whole-hearted commitment to overhaul other root causes of this scourge.