Recovery has to be the goal.. not methadone maintenance

Drug rooms the 'most costly neglect devised'

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AS THE five-year chapter of Scotland's National Mission on drug deaths draws to a close, the Record has asked for opinions from those trying to tackle the problem.

Perhaps the most outspoken voice has been Annemarie Ward, CEO of Faces & Voices of Recovery UK. Here, Annemarie vents fury at the refusal of the Scottish Parliament to green light the Right to Recovery Bill she helped devise.

And she outlines her belief that a right to recovery from addiction is the way to tackle Scotland's shameful drug death toll.

FIVE years, £250million and five ministers later, Scotland's National Mission on Drug Deaths ends not with results but with excuses.

The experts blame the politicians, the politicians blame the system, and the system keeps paying itself while people die.

We're now treated to postmortems from the same "evidence-based" establishment that has overseen decades of failure. Their model has been tested to destruction, yet they rearrange the deckchairs and call it progress.

The Mission was never a revolution. It was a public relations exercise, a gesture to buy time and conformity. It bought silence, kept the usual contractors warm, fed the same NGOs.