DRUGS reform campaigners have hit out at Tory minister Penny Mordaunt after she claimed that the SNP's legacy is that Scots will have “somewhere safe and warm to take heroin”.
The Leader of the House of Commons' comment came as she took aim at the SNP's record, including its support for drug consumption facilities after one was approved for Glasgow.
The chief executive of the Scottish Drugs Forum, Kirsten Horsburgh, said that Mordaunt's comments could "cost lives", while prominent safe consumption campaigner Peter Krykant suggested the top Tory sees drug users "as disposable".
Krykant (above) reacted on Twitter/X, writing: "Cold-hearted comments by Penny Mordaunt.
"Scotland drug death rates are the highest in Europe, we are implementing something proven around the world to reduce deaths and harms but the contempt from Ms Mordaunt is brutal."
He added: "One day people who use drugs will not be seen as disposable."
Horsburgh told The National that Mordaunt's comments were undermining harm reduction approaches to drug reform and could cost lives.
The Scottish Drugs Forum chief said: "This is an unhelpful perspective and derides an evidenced service which engages and supports people who are particularly vulnerable to drug-related harms.
"The national mission of reducing drug deaths can only be delivered with a full spectrum of evidence based effective services.
"Around the world drug consumption rooms are demonstrating their value as part of a compassionate system of support, care and treatment. Undermining harm reduction approaches costs lives."
SNP MP Stewart McDonald made the same point, using his family experience to accuse Mordaunt of disgracing herself.
McDonald wrote: "You disgrace yourself, @PennyMordaunt.
"My brother died of a drug overdose at his home. If he had access to a healthcare facility such as a safe consumption room – somewhere ‘safe and warm’ as you put it – in order to manage his addiction then he might well still be alive today."
The UK’s first drug consumption room could be open by next summer, with a facility planed in Glasgow already approved by NHS and council officials.
The project took a step forward after Scotland’s Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain KC (above) announced it would not be in the “public interest” to prosecute users of such a facility.
The UK Government has said it is not in favour of drug consumption rooms, but said it has no plans to interfere.
Krykant has previously accused Tory MSPs of using “false information” to stoke tensions around drug reform.
The heated row in July started after Murdo Fraser, the Scots Conservatives’ business spokesperson, suggested that anyone who backed the Scottish Government’s proposals for decriminalisation of personal drug use was “ignorant”.
At the time, Krykant said: “Some of the mistakes that the SNP have made have been brutal but in my opinion it [the new proposal] makes complete sense. Decriminalisation is a logical response to what’s going on in the UK right now – it isn’t just in Scotland.
“The simple reality is that if we stop wasting money on criminalising people, we can spend it to support and help people rather than punish them.”
