College comments on Scottish Government Drug Policy Reform plans

Commenting on the Scottish Government’s new “A Caring, Compassionate and Human Rights Informed Drug Policy for Scotland”, Professor Angela Thomas, Director of Heritage at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and co-author of the introduction to the College’s report on drug deaths, said:

The College welcomes the publication of this significant policy document and believes that it makes a number of extremely important recommendations which align with positions we have put forward in recent years based on the views of leading medical experts and clinicians.

We fully support taking a public health approach to tackling the drug deaths emergency in Scotland and we will continue to give our backing to key initiatives like overdose prevention centres which have the potential to save lives.

As our report in 2021 did, we call on the Scottish and UK Governments to work together as constructively as possible to reduce the level of drug deaths and to look at how these proposals might be taken forward; many would benefit all parts of the UK.