Browse content similar to 20/08/2012. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
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Assange. I wanted to go to Sweden and so we can find out if he did | :00:01. | :00:11. | |
:00:11. | :00:15. | ||
those things and whether he is Tonight on Newsnight Scotland. Why | :00:15. | :00:18. | |
are we no longer shocked by the ever spiralling numbers of people | :00:18. | :00:21. | |
on illegal drugs? Treatments like methadone or abstinence can help | :00:21. | :00:25. | |
tackle the medical addiction. But they don't tackle the underlying | :00:25. | :00:28. | |
social issues. Do we need to rethink the way we approach this | :00:28. | :00:37. | |
intractable problem? Methadone was one of the great | :00:37. | :00:41. | |
hopes in the so called war on drugs. The theory was that it could be | :00:41. | :00:44. | |
used to stabilise addicts, get them off heroin, and help them towards a | :00:44. | :00:50. | |
drug-free life. But what was intended to be a staging post on | :00:50. | :00:53. | |
the road to recovery has instead for many become a permanent way of | :00:53. | :00:56. | |
life. And at the same time, the number of drugs deaths in Scotland | :00:56. | :00:59. | |
continues to rise, with methadone often implicated as one of the | :00:59. | :01:08. | |
contributory factors. Here's David I have been on methadone, on and | :01:08. | :01:18. | |
:01:18. | :01:21. | ||
off, for 15 years. Perhaps more. I have had jobs. If I was not on | :01:21. | :01:31. | |
:01:31. | :01:31. | ||
methadone, I would make sure I got out that every day for many drug | :01:31. | :01:37. | |
users, methadone has become a way of life. The might are no longer | :01:37. | :01:41. | |
inject heroin, but many end up stabilised in a pharmaceutical | :01:41. | :01:46. | |
prison. Their annual bill for methadone in Scotland is now �36 | :01:46. | :01:56. | |
:01:56. | :02:00. | ||
million. There are now 22,000 users. They could put you into a three | :02:00. | :02:04. | |
clinic and Divya after-care. Make sure you have after-care for at | :02:04. | :02:14. | |
:02:14. | :02:15. | ||
least a month. -- and give you after-care. At the moment, I am | :02:15. | :02:22. | |
like a ghost, just walking about. People do not recognise me. Well as | :02:22. | :02:27. | |
a methadone users have their doubts, for some chemists methadone has | :02:27. | :02:35. | |
become big business. Some pharmacies like this one are well | :02:35. | :02:39. | |
paid for dispensing methadone. But is it an expensive way of parking | :02:39. | :02:44. | |
the problem? For the wider community, methadone can make a | :02:44. | :02:50. | |
welcome difference. There used to the needles on the pavement, | :02:50. | :02:55. | |
needles everywhere. People were walking into the middle of the road | :02:55. | :02:59. | |
and not knowing where they were. It was just a mess. But I have to say | :02:59. | :03:05. | |
that in the last eight or nine years, it has been a better and | :03:05. | :03:12. | |
safer place. There is still a lot of drugs. In fact I have heard that | :03:12. | :03:17. | |
a lot of readers have started back again. But it has been more | :03:17. | :03:27. | |
peaceful. -- a needles. Pharmacies are on the front line of | :03:27. | :03:36. | |
distributing methadone. The aware of the need to do more. The lead | :03:36. | :03:46. | |
fairly chaotic lives. We need to stabilise them and work with them. | :03:46. | :03:50. | |
We to help them take their addiction. Is that second-stage | :03:51. | :03:58. | |
happening enough? No, it is not. I think we do quite well in his | :03:58. | :04:03. | |
stabilising patients, maintaining patients, helping them to lead and | :04:03. | :04:10. | |
relatively normal lifestyle. But we do not then make the next step. | :04:10. | :04:18. | |
the meantime, they point out that methadone it does help the wider | :04:18. | :04:25. | |
community. A drug user not on treatment can cost almost �60,000 a | :04:25. | :04:33. | |
year in terms of crime. The cost, for a drug user on methadone, drops | :04:33. | :04:38. | |
to �23,000 in the first year, then a �15,000 after that. But are we | :04:38. | :04:48. | |
failing to see the big picture? There are obvious things. The loss | :04:48. | :04:52. | |
of the industrial economy, the loss of purpose and meaning that comes | :04:52. | :05:00. | |
from employment. But added to that his individualism, materialism, the | :05:00. | :05:03. | |
type of culture we create for ourselves where you always have | :05:03. | :05:07. | |
meaning of life if you are able to spend and make your way as a | :05:07. | :05:11. | |
consumer. Many people are denied that, and in being denied that, and | :05:11. | :05:21. | |
:05:21. | :05:22. | ||
in being denied the more traditional forms of life such as | :05:22. | :05:31. | |
family life, you deny them a future. Methadone helps you so much. Most | :05:31. | :05:41. | |
:05:41. | :05:41. | ||
of the time, if you take it early in the morning when the shop opens, | :05:41. | :05:48. | |
by 9 o'clock at night, it wears off. You do not fear that. What are you | :05:48. | :05:53. | |
going to do? You want to go and have a charge. If you have the | :05:53. | :05:59. | |
money it, that is. We wonder what to do. Drug-related deaths in | :05:59. | :06:09. | |
:06:09. | :06:28. | ||
Scotland are on the rise. 584 drug I'm joined this evening by Dr Neil | :06:28. | :06:30. | |
McKeganey, the director for the Centre for Drug Misuse Research at | :06:30. | :06:33. | |
the University of Glasgow. And by the Chair of an Independent | :06:33. | :06:36. | |
Drugs Enquiry, John Matthews. And finally Dr Peter Cawston, a | :06:36. | :06:46. | |
:06:46. | :06:53. | ||
Drumchapel GP who runs a methadone John, from your years as a minister, | :06:53. | :07:03. | |
what did you meet in your parish that was drug addicted and what | :07:03. | :07:08. | |
could have problems have led to that situation? When I first | :07:08. | :07:18. | |
:07:18. | :07:23. | ||
started my ministry in rough hill, -- Ruchill, the hospital there | :07:23. | :07:33. | |
:07:33. | :07:35. | ||
distributed lidos and methadone. That was 20 years ago. -- needles. | :07:35. | :07:43. | |
It was brought him because of fares over HIV and Aids. This was seen to | :07:43. | :07:52. | |
be a stabiliser and a civic protection. Over the 20 years that | :07:52. | :08:01. | |
I was a parish minister there, I conducted over 1300 funerals, a | :08:01. | :08:11. | |
:08:11. | :08:12. | ||
quarter of which were young people who had died as a result of drugs | :08:12. | :08:22. | |
misuse and it just general wear and tear on their bodies. You can see | :08:22. | :08:25. | |
why methadone was seen to be something that saved it lives, | :08:26. | :08:30. | |
stabilised people, but we did not bring along the panoply of other | :08:30. | :08:40. | |
:08:40. | :08:44. | ||
things a were promised. The goal rather used to stabilising people. | :08:44. | :08:52. | |
-- we got rather used to bus stop in a way, the report suggests that | :08:52. | :09:02. | |
:09:02. | :09:09. | ||
I was, I have a small clinic practice and over seven years I | :09:09. | :09:16. | |
have had 45 people come through it. Eight of them are in full-time | :09:16. | :09:19. | |
employment and quite a number have been in significant employment over | :09:20. | :09:29. | |
that time. To my mind, these are eight people who I suspect their | :09:29. | :09:33. | |
taxes have paid for their treatment. There are many people who have | :09:33. | :09:38. | |
moved on to feel that their lives are what they want them to be. Some | :09:38. | :09:44. | |
of those people work around methadone and some are not and I | :09:44. | :09:48. | |
think to focus entirely on the medication rather than on people's | :09:48. | :09:55. | |
lives and letting people move on is a mistake. That is precisely what I | :09:55. | :10:02. | |
do not want to do tonight. But when you look at the extent to which we | :10:02. | :10:10. | |
are drug-addicted in Scotland and the UN very recently said that we | :10:10. | :10:16. | |
had the 6th worst problem in the world, is it a particularly | :10:16. | :10:23. | |
Scottish problem and why should that be? Perhaps I should say that | :10:23. | :10:28. | |
the centre for drug misuse is entirely independent of Glasgow | :10:28. | :10:33. | |
University so it is important that I -- you understand that I am not | :10:33. | :10:39. | |
here as a member of the university. The scale of the problem eclipses | :10:39. | :10:43. | |
any other country. It surprises us because it is a problem that | :10:43. | :10:48. | |
started in the late 80s and nobody expected that the drugs problem in | :10:48. | :10:53. | |
Scotland would reach anything like the scale which we are now seeing. | :10:53. | :10:57. | |
That presents us with a massive challenge. It was always | :10:57. | :11:01. | |
unrealistic to expect the methadone would be the answer to that problem. | :11:01. | :11:06. | |
It is part of an answer but it was never designed to be the main | :11:06. | :11:11. | |
answer to Scotland's heroin problems. Let's get back to | :11:11. | :11:15. | |
methadone in a bit but I am trying to understand how we got here in | :11:15. | :11:22. | |
the first place. The film talked about the de-industrialisation as a | :11:22. | :11:28. | |
major factor. The parish I had was very poor. When I first went there | :11:28. | :11:33. | |
it was in freefall in terms of the lack of employment, the state of | :11:33. | :11:40. | |
the housing where young men ducked and dived and young girls saw it as | :11:40. | :11:46. | |
attractive to start a family, and young people were generally | :11:46. | :11:50. | |
rubbished and if you are rubbished every day and told you are rubbish | :11:50. | :11:54. | |
then you start to believe that and then you do not care how you live, | :11:54. | :12:00. | |
what to swallow, who you go with. To that extent we were trying to | :12:00. | :12:04. | |
give young people the sense at which they were valued but I would | :12:04. | :12:13. | |
have to say that drugs and alcohol do not happen in a vacuum. They | :12:13. | :12:17. | |
happen in a culture and our culture has moved that way and we are | :12:17. | :12:22. | |
parties are baiters, all of us, you and I are participating as in that | :12:22. | :12:26. | |
culture. Is it a culture that has now become embedded or is it | :12:26. | :12:33. | |
changing? I think it is certainly a major part of many people's life | :12:33. | :12:40. | |
experience. We know lots of people who do use drugs or come across it | :12:40. | :12:47. | |
at school so I suppose it is embedded in some respects. Scotland | :12:47. | :12:53. | |
is a very unequal society and in a sense this is simply one facet of | :12:53. | :13:00. | |
that inequality. As a society, are we becoming immune to the 500 plus | :13:00. | :13:05. | |
drug deaths that are reported? Are we shrugging our shoulders and | :13:05. | :13:13. | |
saying, that is how it is? Sadly we are. If in Scotland we had a jumbo | :13:13. | :13:19. | |
jet crashing every year, we would be shocked by that to a degree much | :13:19. | :13:24. | |
greater than we greet these figures. They are shocking for a few number | :13:24. | :13:28. | |
of days that the figures come out and then they recede in interest | :13:28. | :13:33. | |
and we somehow have become attuned to the level of drug mortality in | :13:33. | :13:39. | |
Scotland. That is a shocking situation to find ourselves in. | :13:39. | :13:43. | |
do now have recovery at the heart of government policy but do we know | :13:43. | :13:50. | |
what we mean by that, John? Differ in people mean different things by | :13:50. | :13:54. | |
yet. There are those who say recovery is about total abstinence | :13:55. | :13:58. | |
and what Peter were saying was that they are right people who can | :13:58. | :14:03. | |
stabilise their lives and enjoy a certain quality of life by obeying | :14:03. | :14:09. | |
the rules in terms off taking methadone. What we see it in these | :14:09. | :14:12. | |
figures that were released are people who are messing about with | :14:12. | :14:16. | |
other things which is a very dangerous thing to do with | :14:16. | :14:20. | |
methadone. You are not supposed to mess about with other substances if | :14:20. | :14:27. | |
you are on the methadone programme? It is not a requirement and we have | :14:27. | :14:32. | |
to understand that for many people who are not as I described working | :14:32. | :14:36. | |
or feeling that their lives have some meaning, life can be very | :14:36. | :14:41. | |
meaningless and boring on methadone and it is a huge problem for me to | :14:41. | :14:49. | |
try and help people deal with other problems. A significant number of | :14:49. | :14:54. | |
my patients take alcohol as well as methadone. There is a lack of help | :14:54. | :15:00. | |
for people on methadone and who have mental health problems. Many | :15:00. | :15:05. | |
are psychologically traumatised by their experience of drugs and also | :15:05. | :15:08. | |
many people are physically carrying these bars in terms of their bodies, | :15:08. | :15:14. | |
so a lot of my time at the clinic is spent treating heart, liver, | :15:14. | :15:20. | |
lung problems. A I was quite struck by the methadone user in the film | :15:20. | :15:27. | |
who talks about the need for going into an intense clinic based | :15:27. | :15:33. | |
programme and then having help and support thereafter. I'll be good at | :15:33. | :15:36. | |
continuing to support people who may be do manage to become drug | :15:36. | :15:44. | |
free? No, we do not do that well at all. The research shows that | :15:44. | :15:48. | |
addicts who have managed to come off drugs were those who were able | :15:48. | :15:53. | |
to move into a reservation -- residential programme. That will | :15:53. | :15:58. | |
not be successful for everybody but those who have secured that period | :15:58. | :16:02. | |
in a presidential we have, they did better but it is a worried that we | :16:02. | :16:06. | |
have a drugs policy in Scotland that is committed to recovery but | :16:06. | :16:10. | |
we still do not know how many people on the methadone problem are | :16:10. | :16:15. | |
actually coming off a drug-free. That was a criticism of the Labour | :16:15. | :16:20. | |
government in the past but it is a situation that persists. We do not | :16:20. | :16:24. | |
have accurate numbers of drug users on the methadone programme or | :16:24. | :16:30. | |
accurate information about those recovering from it. Do you see | :16:30. | :16:36. | |
methadone as continuing to be a part of our drugs strategy or do | :16:36. | :16:43. | |
you think it could be replaced altogether? I think we have a | :16:43. | :16:47. | |
fantasy that they can be a short, sharp solution where people come | :16:47. | :16:51. | |
off drugs and I think there are significant risks associated with | :16:51. | :17:01. | |
coming off. People lose their tolerance to opiates and then go | :17:01. | :17:08. | |
back on to drugs and die. Their run risks associated with both | :17:08. | :17:11. | |
rehabilitation and methadone treatment. Icy methadone as | :17:11. | :17:15. | |
continuing to be part of the picture. I think what people need | :17:15. | :17:20. | |
more than anything his people that work with them who are committed to | :17:20. | :17:24. | |
helping them move on in their lives, whether that is three about the | :17:24. | :17:28. | |
Dome or other means. How hopeful are you that we can make some | :17:28. | :17:36. | |
headway? The smoking situation in terms of improved health to 20 | :17:36. | :17:41. | |
years. The independent inquiry used a metaphor of the iceberg. It | :17:41. | :17:45. | |
exists because the temperature of the water is too cold and this | :17:45. | :17:50. | |
iceberg that we have is continuing to grow and will do so unless we | :17:50. | :17:53. | |
have raised the temperature of the water, and the temperature of the | :17:53. | :18:00. | |
water is the culture of Scotland of which we are all participants in. | :18:00. | :18:04. | |
Until we decide to help and do something about it, then I fear | :18:04. | :18:10. | |
that we will continue in the way that we are doing. Thank you. Let's | :18:10. | :18:15. | |
take a look at tomorrow's front pages. Let's start with the | :18:15. | :18:19. | |
Scottish Daily Mail. It goes with say no to students from the middle | :18:19. | :18:25. | |
classes. Scots are being frozen out of universities in favour of | :18:25. | :18:31. | |
children from poorer areas. There is a picture of Prince Harry. The | :18:31. | :18:36. | |
Scotsman goes with my mum's killer was just like a brother to me in. | :18:36. | :18:42. | |
The paper says the sun cannot forgive the friend or family it of | :18:42. | :18:50. | |
the Nadal of Jenny. The Independent has an interesting front page story | :18:50. | :18:55. | |
on the NHS in England. Global that work of NHS hospitals to exploit | :18:55. | :19:00. | |
the brand and there has been confirmation that this is to be | :19:00. | :19:04. |