Glimpse of what happened when a city abandons war on drugs

It could have been a post-apocalyptic scene. Shoeless figures lay in a heap on the pavement while others, barely conscious, were slumped in shop doorways.

Every few yards along the street, another pitiful sight of humanity laid low by a dismal scourge. Those still moving looked zombified. Those face-down at the side of the road looked dead. Possibly some were.

This was downtown Portland, Oregon, last year, learning the hard way what becomes of a city which takes a supposedly 'progressive' approach to solving its drug abuse problem.

It decriminalised the possession of hard drugs including heroin and methamphetamine in November 2020 – becoming the first US city to do so – and watched in horror as the death rate rocketed.

It saw its commercial centre transformed into a hellscape – a place where crime was rampant, needles and drug paraphernalia were everywhere, addicts engaged in increasingly maniacal and self-destructive behaviour and businesses withered and died because ordinary Portlanders considered downtown a no-go zone.

Earlier this year the city fathers saw the error of their ways and accepted what residents had long been telling them – that decriminalisation was a disaster.

It reversed the policy and, months on, the city is beginning a long journey to recovery.

Some 4,500 miles away in Glasgow, the scenes witnessed in Portland require no great leap of the imagination. A version of them is already in play in parts of the city centre.

The taking of hard drugs is rife in lanes linking major thoroughfares. Zombified figures are a common sight – as are addicts dead to the world.

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The city has the highest rate of drugs deaths per head of population in Scotland – which, in turn, has by far the highest rate in Europe.

According to the latest data, it has 2.7 times the drugs death rate of England and almost three times the next worst overseas country, which is Ireland.

Some 1,172 people died in Scotland due to drugs misuse in 2023 – a 12 per cent rise on 2022.

It is, the Scottish Government readily admits, a public health 'emergency'. Yet earlier this month it reaffirmed its commitment to tackling the problem by doing exactly what Portland had done with such catastrophic results in 2020.

Speaking about the issue on BBC's Question Time in Dundee, Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth said: 'Our approach to tackling drug use in Scotland has been overtly criminal in the past and that is the problem.'

She added: 'I think taking a more public health approach to this is the right thing to do and not criminalising people.'

When confronted by host Fiona Bruce with the Portland example – where drugs deaths rose by 1,500 per cent during decriminalisation – Ms Gilruth insisted the policy had proved effective elsewhere in the world.

When challenged to name one place, there was no answer – other than to say her government planned to test it in Glasgow. Part of this test will come in the form of a 'consumption room' for illegal drugs – the UK's first – due to open in the city soon.

Based in Hunter Street in the east end, it will allow people to take Class A drugs under the supervision of clinical staff 365 days a year between 9am and 9pm.

The 'non-judgmental space' appears to have the blessing of Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain, who said last year it would not be in the public interest to prosecute its users for drug possession.

Two years before that, Ms Bain announced a significant shift in policy relating to those found with Class A drugs such as heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine.

She gave Police Scotland discretion to issue warnings to offenders rather than charge them.

In all cases, police confiscate any drugs found. Three years on, the policy is viewed by many as de facto decriminalisation – a huge step towards the approach which brought such disastrous consequences in Portland.

And yet the Scottish Government insists that it does not go far enough.

In a report it published last year, it argued 'decriminalising drugs for personal use would help and support people' and ultimately 'improve and save lives'.

The barrier, it said, was the UK Government to which the powers to decriminalise were reserved. Westminster, therefore, should change the law UK-wide.

Alternatively, the Government could devolve powers relating to drugs laws to Holyrood.

The third suggested route for decriminalising Class A drugs in Scotland was independence.

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What emerges, then, is a nation with by far the biggest drugs deaths problem in the UK – not to mention across Europe – demanding the right to pursue a strategy which is proven to exacerbate rather than alleviate the chaos wrought by these killer drugs.

'It is utter ignorance,' says Annemarie Ward, a former addict from Ayrshire who is now CEO of the charity Faces and Voices of Recovery UK.

The 54-year-old, an internationally recognised expert on drugs recovery, says the Portland example stands as a salutary warning of what lies down a road upon which Scotland has already embarked.

She says the nation is firmly in the grip of the 'harm reduction' policy which seeks to contain addiction rather than prioritise recovery from it.

'It started off 30 years ago and we were assured by the stalwarts of the harm reduction ideology that this was not in any way, shape or form a Trojan horse for legalisation.

'We are now at the point where the harm reduction idealogues will say, 'it's because you're not doing enough'.'

She adds: 'They say 'If only we had opened more drug consumption rooms, if only we had given people more free needles, if only we gave them safe supplies,' so it's never enough – the harm reduction interventions are never enough and it's only if we give people more and more drugs and more and more access to drugs, then we'll save lives, but that's just not the case.

'The evidence doesn't bear that out and the main reason why harm reduction in Portland failed drastically is because it didn't address the root causes of addiction, which is all the homelessness, mental health issues, poverty, trauma – all the stuff that we are experiencing in Scotland.'

For many recovered addicts, she says, it was the criminal consequences of drug-taking which helped shake them awake.

Now she says, 'There's not only a lack of deterrent, there's a lack of treatment.

'The problem is we've got a system that creates systemic dependency. That is what the harm reduction policies have done. They have fostered dependence, and this obviously results in keeping people on the substances.

'The ideology of this so-called philosophy that they put forward is that we're meeting people where they're at and we're being non-judgmental, but our argument is 'Yeah, but you don't leave them there for 30 years or 40 years, as has been the case.'

The Portland example looks pertinent to Glasgow for many reasons. In population terms, the two cities are identical in size. Like Glasgow, the Oregon city considers itself liberal and progressive. Indeed, it has been called America's 'capital of woke'.

Among the drugs of choice there was fentanyl, a synthetic opioid which is up to 50 times more powerful than heroin. It is now gaining a foothold in Glasgow too.

As decriminalisation kicked in, it was not just the death count which rose. Crime went up too. Addicts from elsewhere converged on Portland, seeing it as a safe haven for drug taking.

They pushed crime up still further as they stole to feed their addictions. Open air drugs markets flourished.

Needles littered the streets – many of them handed out by well-meaning charities.

Drug-taking in full view of passers-by became an everyday sight and horrified parents stopped taking their children downtown.

Even the New York Times, which had called for drug laws to be relaxed, accepted the place had become 'a drug-user's paradise.'

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Ms Ward says it is already clear crime in Glasgow and elsewhere in Scotland is closely connected with addiction. Indeed, the practice of issuing police warnings to those found with drugs compounds the crime problem, she argues.

'Previously they would have taken that person to the cells,' she says. 'Now that person has had their drugs taken off them and been sent on their way, so they are even sicker than they were and even more desperate, so they are going to go away and commit more crime to restock.'

The advent of a Glasgow consumption room is another grave mistake, she says, empowering addicts not to get clean and sober but to carry on taking drugs in controlled conditions. She says: 'We are sending mixed messages to society about the dangers of drugs when we are telling people they can get their drugs tested for safe consumption and they can go to safe consumption sites.

'If there are no consequences there is not a need to change, is there? The system has become over-reliant on keeping people in a state of managing addiction rather than providing them with the resources and opportunities to break free.'

How much further down the road to decriminalisation will the consumption room take Scotland, then? Certainly, police have no intention of raiding the premises and arresting anyone inside for possession.

But there remains uncertainty about the approach to be taken outside the facility.

A Police Scotland spokesman insists the law has not changed and drugs will be confiscated from anyone found with them. It means that, under the letter of the law, addicts carrying heroin could be stopped and have their drugs taken from them yards from the door of the place they are going to take them.

But will that happen in practice – or will an unofficial drugs possession 'amnesty' be in place around the facility?

The Crown Office denies that any kind of tolerance zone will be in place.

But Neil McKeganey, co-director of the Centre for Substance Use Research in Glasgow, says the facility 'sounds a legal and bureaucratic nightmare'.

He adds: 'Realistically, the drug consumption room will require an effective tolerance zone in which the police agree not to arrest anyone in the centre, going to the centre, or leaving the centre.'

The facility, he says, 'can only operate in the grey area where it is entirely at the discretion of the police what they do and when they do it and to whom.'

As for the drive towards decriminalisation, Dr McKeganey says the Scottish Government risks turning Scotland into the 'go-to' place for drugs by pursuing 'an entirely mythical idea that by allowing people to use illegal drugs, without fear of prosecution, they can somehow reduce the harms.'

He adds: 'The most likely outcome of such a policy is that illegal drugs will become more available, not less available, and the harms those drugs cause will increase, not reduce.'

The evidence from places which had introduced decriminalisation, says Dr McKeganey, is it not only failed to reduce the harms but allowed the drugs trade to gain 'an unassailable foothold' in those communities.

A Crown Office spokesman said possession of illegal drugs in the consumption room would remain an offence but the Lord Advocate was prepared to publish a statement of prosecution policy to the effect that it would not be in the public interest to charge users of it.

The spokesman said: 'The Lord Advocate is content that the proposed facility could provide a mechanism for support services to engage with some of the most vulnerable people in society.'

A Police Scotland spokesman said recorded police warnings were a tool available to officers for specific offences 'where it was justifiable and proportionate'.

On the force's approach to the consumption room, Assistant Chief Constable Catriona Paton said: 'Existing legislation will not be changing, and our officers will be bound by their legal duty to uphold the law and will not ignore acts of criminality.

'We also have a duty to respond to the communities in the area surrounding the Safer Drugs Consumption Facility.'

The Scottish Government was adamant yesterday that decriminalisation did work.

A spokesman said: 'The balance of international evidence on decriminalisation – and from evaluated safer drugs consumption facilities worldwide – shows that both can save and improve lives and significantly reduce some of the harms associated with problem drug use.

'However, we know neither is a silver bullet and strong support, treatment and harm reduction services are also needed.'

Further 'evidence-based' measures being taken to reduce harms included widening access to treatment and support and increasing the availability of residential rehabilitation.

In Portland, even many of the drug users themselves came to the view that decriminalisation was a grievous mistake.

They could see the evidence with their own eyes – all around them and in their own hopelessness and despair.

Yet, on the strength of competing evidence ministers appear unable to cite, Scotland ploughs on towards the US city's model. Its hellscape could soon be our own.