Growing up in a working class community like the Hilltown in Dundee, I was always aware of the presence of deprivation and drug use. Part of the reason, perhaps, was that, from the age of 19, I helped establish a foodbank, which became the busiest in Scotland and was intimately acquainted with people experiencing poverty as well as the reasons underpinning that poverty. However, only months earlier, I myself overcame class A drug use that could have easily spiralled into addiction and death.
The recent news that there were 1,187 recorded lives lost to drugs in Scotland – and Dundee was top of the league table – will not have come as a huge surprise to those living in working class or income-deprived communities in Dundee. It was, however, received by our elected politicians like a metaphorical slap in the face, as they appeared to be awoken from their economically-insulated and socially-unaware slumber. Rather than taking a period of sober reflection, they have been grasping for solutions.
“In Dundee, the two primary links to addiction I have consistently observed over the last 15 years are adverse childhood experiences and lack of purpose. The latter was my own personal affliction.”
The Scottish government has correctly described the situation as “a public health emergency”. However, they have lamentably used it to reignite the constitutional debate, arguing for further devolution to implement an agenda of decriminalisation and safe injection rooms. Additionally, the Scottish Drugs Forum proposed the prescription of Valium last week and, this week, Glasgow City Council announced plans to prescribe pharmaceutical grade heroin, as if these are progressive moves.
Although the Scottish Government announced £20 million of funding to “help tackle the drugs emergency” in its new Programme for Government, it is expected that the resources will be deployed to the very services whom the Dundee Drugs Commission recently described as not fit for purpose. The Commission report stated: “We learned about inadequacies in our local systems and services [and] frequently heard from individuals and families who feel the system has failed them.”
Decriminalisation may disempower illegal drug dealers but if the net effect means we empower a kind of legal drug dealing run by pharmaceutical services, who have a vested financial interest in the ongoing prescription of substitute drugs, then no progress has been made. Furthermore, no one I know still on the journey of recovery has stated a willingness to use a safe injection room. One friend said: “Who do you know that buys a half bottle and drinks it in the off licence? We take drugs at home.”
Recently, I was sitting in a room with Leslie Evans, the Permanent Secretary to the Scottish Government, who engaged with individuals and organisations fighting back against the tide of addiction in Dundee. I raised my concern about the Government-convened Drug Death Task Force which, at the time, had almost a complete absence of people with experience of addiction on it. Although the complexion of the Task Force has now been altered, Evans said she shared – and raised – similar concerns.
The lack of interaction with those experiencing addiction, on the journey of recovery or having overcome addiction is fundamental to our current failure because we cannot administer an antidote to address an ailment if we do not fully understand the nature of the ailment itself. In Dundee, the two primary links to addiction I have consistently observed over the last 15 years are adverse childhood experiences and lack of purpose. The latter was my own personal affliction.
Leaving school in the early 2000s was difficult, but I think it is harder now. In 2003, you could buy The Courier on a Friday for 40 pence and have 10 pages of jobs. Now, you pay £1.10 and get half a page. In 2003, you could leave school and be paid a good wage. Now, you do not receive the national living wage until the age of 25. Dundee is also a university city and a sixth of our population are students. Trying to find your way in a city where most people your own age have a sense of direction is crushing.
However, the link between abuse and addiction in Dundee is deeper. I remember my first Narcotics Anonymous meeting in the Hilltown and it was also the first meeting for Caroline, a woman in her late twenties. She was a glamorous middle-class, married woman with a six-year-old daughter. However, she had been raped by a paedophile aged only four and, unable to shake the flashbacks, she self-medicated via the use of heroin at the age of 26. I wish I could tell you hers was an isolated story.
The binary narrative of prosperity and austerity is stitched deeply into the fabric of Dundee and the tapestry of deindustrialisation, deprivation and drug deaths is multi-layered and tightly-woven. However, we have an opportunity to rediscover ourselves and rewrite a new narrative. Once known as the city of discovery, perhaps we could become the city of recovery?
Ewan Gurr is a journalist and poverty activist.
This report is part of #JustSurviving – a collaboration between HuffPost UK and investigative journalism platform The Ferret looking at the impact of the government’s austerity policy in Scotland.