Scottish Affairs Committee
Oral evidence: Problem Drug use in Scotland, HC 1977
Tuesday 21 May 2019
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 21 May 2019.
Members present: Pete Wishart (Chair); Deidre Brock; Hugh Gaffney; John Lamont; Danielle Rowley; Tommy Sheppard; Ross Thomson.
Questions 57-79
Witnesses
I: Sharon Brand, Scott Ferguson, Colin Hepburn and Hannah Snow.
Written evidence from witnesses:
– [Add names of witnesses and hyperlink to submissions]
Witnesses: Sharon Brand, Scott Ferguson, Colin Hepburn and Hannah Snow.
Q57 Chair: Welcome. Thank you for coming all the way down from Edinburgh to join us today for this session on problem drug use in Scotland. We want to hear your personal testimony about some of the issues you have confronted. We are going to start by giving you all five minutes or so to tell us what it has been like for you—your real-life experiences. Please be as open as you can with the Committee. Once we have concluded that, we might ask you some questions, if that is okay. To get started, I am going to ask Colin to go first.
Colin Hepburn: I am Colin Hepburn and 46 years of age. I first started using substances at about 10 or 11 years old. That was solvents. I noticed very quickly that the older ones in the community were on solvents. It was also kind of normal for me to see that that is what grown-ups did. That probably led me on to other things, even when I said it would not lead me on to other things, it probably did lead me on to other things, because of my circumstances at the time.
The area that I was living in was being pulled down. It was an area of urban deprivation. There was high unemployment and crime. It seemed that nobody was working. Bear in mind that I grew up during the miners’ strike, you know. It was probably a sense of hopelessness throughout the area.
There was no investment in the area. There was no community centre as such. The one that was in our area was a kind of boundary between two housing areas. They were both part of the same housing area but we classed them as two different areas, so there was that rivalry. So, it was kind of all stuff like that. For me looking back, it was a sense of no hope and no sense of purpose. Just that: feeling heartbreak, feeling “what’s the point?” and I coped with that by using substances. I ended up using substances for nearly 30 years of my life before I got in recovery. Part of my recovery has led me down here today to explain to yourselves, to try and make things change—hopefully make things change. That is maybe the best I can say.
Chair: Thank you ever so much for that, Colin. It is really helpful.
Sharon Brand: My name is Sharon Brand. I am 41 years old and I’m from Dundee. My experience is quite similar to Colin’s. I started drinking alcohol quite young—maybe 12 or 13—and experimented with cocaine and amphetamines during my teenage years. I lived in London at the time and was brought up in London. I went to college, started university and then I moved back to Dundee. I had my first son at 21 and then the second at 25. In the space of three weeks, I lost my grandparents. My grandmother and my dad emigrated and my support system left. Everything fell apart around us and I was associated with people who were using heroin. I succumbed to that after about a year. I used heroin for about seven years and then got into treatment. I was on methadone for three. Then I reduced off the methadone myself. Now I am in recovery and I do a lot of work in Dundee to try and establish a recovery community as such.
Chair: Thank you ever so much for that.
Scott Ferguson: I am Scott Ferguson. I am 45 years of age. I grew up in an area up in Scotland—Stirling, in St Ninians—and it was quite a deprived area. A lot of unemployment. But there was a lot of sense of love in the community, a close-knit community. Along with that there was a lot of alcohol use in the community and I grew up around that. I first moved on to substances at about the age 12 or 13, sniffing solvents and stuff. I started being chaotic at school, chaotic in my community. I ended up in children’s homes, so I went through social services up until the age of about 14. While I was in there, that was when my behaviour went really off the wall and I started hanging about with the wrong people. I first got introduced to cannabis. Then I was off and running on the drug scene. I could go through all the drugologies but it took me to a dark place, suicidal thoughts. I wasn’t wanting to live but I wasn’t wanting to die at the same time.
My life got chaotic. I ended up in institutions, prisons, psychiatric wards, rehabilitation centres. I ended up with services on a methadone programme on and off for nearly 19 years. But I think that was probably a barrier for me to get into recovery—being on a methadone programme for that long. I wasn’t engaging with the services properly. The first time, probably, that I did really engage was about three and a half years ago. It was the first time I was shown empathy, compassion and care from my service worker. I had nearly 20 years in that service and it was the first time I could actually feel that compassion, care and empathy. That is when my journey began, when I got shown that. I eventually came off my prescription nearly two and a half years ago now. This was hard. It was the first time I had been abstinent in recovery in my whole life, since I started using drugs. Then, over 15 months ago now, I got employed by addiction support and counselling. I went through the recovery communities, volunteering, peer supporting and then a job came up and I got it. It was my first ever job, as a 44-year-old, and I haven’t looked back since. I have turned my adversities in my life now into assets to help other people and that is the biggest thing I can really do. Thanks.
Chair: Thank you very much.
Hannah Snow: Good morning. I’m Hannah Snow. I’m 26 and from Aberdeen. I had substance misuse/addiction for 13 years. I was involved with a lot of services. I experienced criminal justice services, prison services, mental health services. I progressed through a number of drugs. I think it’s really important that a specific drug is not talked about; any addiction can come from the use of drugs. I got into recovery 18 months ago, and I am abstinent—my recovery is based on no mood or mind-altering substances. I had to go down that route for myself because the only time I could emotionally connect with another person was when I had a clear state of mind. I experienced homelessness from the age of 16 to 22, when I secured myself a permanent residence. I am really nervous. I’m shaking right now.
Chair: It’s okay. Take it easy, in your own time.
Hannah Snow: It is so overwhelming. I have read into a lot about this and I realise that you have been doing a lot of inquiries over the last 10 years. I am intrigued to know what comes out of this today, and I am here for you to get some information from me to help you on your journey.
Q58 Chair: Thank you ever so much for that. It is really helpful. We will ask some questions, if that is okay, about your own experience and about some of the things that have happened. I am probably most interested in the interventions you have had with health services or criminal justice services. Listening to you, you all seem to have come through the other end, and are now in recovery and are making valuable contributions to this debate. Could you talk a little about some of the interventions you have had, whether through the police or through other services getting involved, and about how helpful or problematic they have been in getting you to where you are just now? Could we maybe start with you, Scott?
Scott Ferguson: I was involved with criminal justice services for years. As I said, I wasn’t engaging with these services properly because I was always probably either on some kind of mind-altering substance or had just been released from prison—that was on several occasions. I just wasn’t properly engaging until I got shown that first bit of compassion and that first bit of empathy, and first felt that care from the services.
Q59 Chair: Who did you get that from? Which service was it?
Scott Ferguson: From community alcohol and drug services and my criminal justice worker. She was doing a lot of linked casework with my community alcohol and drug services worker, so they were singing off the same hymn sheet and knew what stage I was at, where I was at. That was the first bit of compassion and empathy. I didn’t feel like I was worthless. That is the way I felt. I felt worthless because that is where my direction had taken me. I was in and out of homeless accommodation and I just couldn’t get it until I got shown that compassion and empathy, and I got that sense of belief in myself for the first time that I could maybe change.
Q60 Chair: What about the rest of you? Are there any positive interventions like that, or anything that has gone badly wrong in how your addiction has been dealt with by a range of services? Hannah, please.
Hannah Snow: My experience through the prison service and the social work service is that, from the age of 16, I had a 10-year period when I was involved with criminal justice and was in and out of prison a lot. I would do a prison sentence and on the day of release get told to report to the council and they would issue me somewhere to stay. For an 18-month period of time I was in an environment where I had no responsibilities—everything was done for me. Going out into the community, I did not have the ability to communicate. My behaviours and actions—the way I behaved and conducted myself in my addiction—meant that I could not get across my point, and how frustrated and angry I was at the situation I was in. The easiest option for me—the only thing that I knew how to do at that time—was to go and use drugs. That can sound like a cop-out and lack of taking responsibility for life choices that I should be making. I should not have been in prison in the first place. I understand that. But I think there is a gap in the process. If you look at it, a third of criminals who are released from prison are in addiction or have had addiction problems since they went into prison. What hope do they have if they are just released?
Q61 Chair: Can I just ask how you found yourself caught up in the criminal justice system? We have heard a lot that people who are drug users find themselves in prison and they tell us that there was not really a service to help them get back into the community effectively.
Hannah Snow: For me, I was in a residential unit where I was looked after. I was released from that residential unit at the age of 15 and I was placed with a family. When I turned 16 I was asked to leave the family, because I was being so chaotic. I then went into homeless accommodation and from homeless accommodation into prison.
I was a child. I did not know how to look after myself. I did not know how to do simple menial tasks like work a washing machine. When I went into prison it was just an easier life. I tried heroin in prison for the first time at 16. I tried diazepam in prison. There were a number of times in prison where I was approached by prison officers and told that I needed to sort myself out, because I was withdrawing from drugs. In that situation, those prison officers knew what was going on, yet they would rather have us in a state—well, it is less for them to deal with and process. It is less work for them. But I got placed on orders, and for somebody whose life is unmanageable and chaotic, to be asked to go to an appointment at a certain time, fill out a form or turn up to court—you are living in a feral state and the last thing on your mind is to go to an appointment to check in with a social worker.
Chair: Thanks for that.
Q62 Hugh Gaffney: Pete asked how you got into the criminal justice system, but each one of you were children when you started taking drugs, or you were looked after by care. We haven’t looked after you as a society. You were supposed to be children getting looked after. That seems to have become history now. It shows that children were not looked after in society when they were supposed to be, at the very beginning. You were among other children who were supposed to get the same care. Did you get the proper care when you were children? Sorry if I am taking you back to a bad time, but if any of you can, speak about it, please do. I think you have to stop it at the very beginning. You never asked to get into the criminal justice system; we as a society never looked after you.
Colin Hepburn: I am the youngest of six in a large household. My ma worked three jobs to put food on the table. I was cared for. I made my choices, probably through peer pressure and generational disadvantage. The people above me, the older ones I looked on as grown-ups, were sniffing glue and drinking alcohol, because there were high levels of unemployment and the only way to make money was criminality. They were either on low benefits or there was nae jobs. The Barras was out of jobs and the only way to survive was through criminality. So aye, we were looked after, but we weren’t looked after the way we should have been by society, so we had to adapt and take care of ourselves.
I was cared for. I’ve had nae involvement with prisons. I’ve worked most of my adult life, and when I wasn’t working, I was claiming benefits. I struggled by with my addiction but always found ways and means to get my drugs, even through criminality. If I couldn’t get any money, I went without and suffered the consequences. If I got the chance, I took work on and paid my taxes. My last job was for six and a half years; all the while, I was addicted to heroin and alcohol.
Scott Ferguson: You can’t rewind the clock and change things that have been. I think we need to look at what we can change now for the addict out there today. Looking at stats, 60% of known drug addicts are in active treatment in England, but it is only 40% up in Scotland. Why is that? I know that in England they get a lot of funding for assertive outreach, whereas up in Scotland not much is going on; third-party sectors have to rely on their local alcohol and drug partnerships for funding and stuff, whereas down in England they get a set pot of money for that assertive outreach.
On top of that, there is a lot more people on ORT replacement therapy—on buprenorphine—in England. Up in Scotland, that rate is very low. Why? Because it’s dearer. We were doing an injecting provisions survey in my local area through my work, and I asked a pharmacist how much it was for a big 5-litre tub of methadone with a pump on it, and he said £90. I asked how much buprenorphine was and he did not answer; he just said, “Oh, that’s well expensive”. To change this in our local area up in Scotland, I think we need quite a lot of funding towards support, and outreach stuff as well.
Q63 Chair: Can I ask you, Sharon, the same question I asked your colleagues about what interventions you have had with health services, recovery services and criminal justice, and how they worked for you?
Sharon Brand: I was very fortunate: I never went through the criminal justice system. My addiction came to a head when I was 27, and I reached out to social work for support for me and my children. The way they supported me was by removing my children and looking after them and then leaving me to it. There was no additional support for me to address any of the issues. I didn’t know how to work through my addiction, and in Dundee there was not very much on offer at that time anyway. Luckily for me, I had a friend who is five years ahead of me in recovery. She has mentored me the whole way through. We are both quite active in the recovery community that exists now.
I think that my children suffered quite badly from the effects of social work and the intervention that they had. I think this is quite important. I know Scott says that we shouldn’t look to the past, but we are now supporting young people who are placed out of the care system and straight into homeless units, where there are people who have been in active addiction for 20 or 30 years. These kids go in there without any support. The places that they get put in don’t know how to support the people they house. We are creating another four or however many people who will be sitting here in another 10 or 20 years telling you exactly the same thing, because the cycle is continuing.
Intervention needs to come in early, well before it gets to the point where we are supporting recovery communities or investing in that. I agree with Scott and Hannah, but I am saying that we are supporting kids now who have come from three generations of people who have been addicted. They are not addicted, but you can see that it is going to happen. Unless that is addressed, nothing is going to change.
Q64 Danielle Rowley: Thank you for coming in and speaking to us today. We will get evidence from experts and statistics and everything, and that is important, but it is only half the story. We can’t try to inform policy if we have not got your voices, so it is so important that we have now. Thank you.
Colin, you talked about not having community centres and things when you were growing up. We are talking about young people and support for them, and there are communities that don’t have things like that—where libraries and community centres are closed. There’s nothing there for young people to do, and if young folk get into trouble and maybe fall in with a crowd and think about trying drugs, there is no one for them to speak to; there is not really any place for them to go and access help. What kind of things do you think would be good to have in communities that people could go out to? Do you think it is community hubs?
Colin Hepburn: When I was growing up—12, 13—and I was probably just experimenting with cannabis, we had youth workers in our area; we had a community flat. We also had a local social work department that came in and did—I think it was called intermediate treatment.
What they did is they came into the scheme; they did a sort of outreach for the young people like me, and they did intervention with us to keep us out of trouble. They tried to guide us, but at 13, 14, we thought we knew it all. We had that blasé attitude—“We know best.” Fair dos, my mum and dad were in charge, but we still knew better. Looking back now, I know that is total—but I’m in a better place now, and I understand why I was at that place when I was. Again, it’s all about searching for identity, going against your parents and rebelling.
Partly, I acknowledge, when you get police coming in—I can’t believe I’m going to say this. I was brought up anti-authority. You don’t tell the police nothing. You see the police come in, and they’re not policing the area; they’re bullying the area. They come in like gangsters. They are dehumanising you and locking you up for nothing. They are charging you for nothing. You don’t stand a chance, right from the off. You get a police officer telling you, “I’m getting you when you’re 16.” What hope is that for a 13-year-old boy? That was just my experience, and I’m probably not alone in that.
Scott Ferguson: Can I answer the question about helping the youth in our communities? In this day and age, I think there is that sort of outreach that needs to be done as well. It’s okay for a police officer or a prison officer to go into a school or something like that and give them the “just say no to drugs” attitude, but there is lived experience going in. In my role, I’ve been asked on a few occasions to go down to a college and speak to 15 to 17-year-olds who have maybe been boasting about what they’ve been up to at the weekends and stuff. I’ll go in and speak to them. I go down and tell them my experience: what drugs did to me, and how I got well from it. I think that is really important.
Also in my role, I go up to the hospital. I work alongside the hospital addiction team and speak to addicts who are maybe in there with problematic drug or alcohol misuse. On a couple of occasions, I’ve spoken to 17, 18 or 19-year-olds. One guy in particular was only 18 years old, and he was in intensive care. He had just come through, but he was still in there for observation and stuff, and I went up there to speak to him. His father was there, and he was broken, this 18-year-old. I think there’s more stuff like that needed—people with lived experience going and speaking to people; that sort of outreach stuff.
Hannah Snow: On what Scott said about going into schools, especially academy schools, and giving our lived experience to 13 and 14-year-olds, I have gone to a few high schools in Aberdeen; the head of the department has approached us. We have gone in and we’ve shared, and the response has been mind-blowing. I have had people coming up to me at the end and asking for advice for their parents. They’ve been embarrassed, because at that age, it’s all about how you dress, how you look, how you act, but if you strip it all back, they are scared. They are going through a phase in their life where their emotions are all over the place, and they don’t know how to talk about how they feel.
I would highlight that point about expressing how you feel, because I used drugs on my feelings. I used drugs on fear-based feelings—overwhelming vulnerability, and the embarrassment of coming from a family with a low income and not being able to afford certain things. We live in a materialistic world; that’s the reality of it. As harsh as it is, and as much as we don’t need the things that we think we do, at a teenage level, when you don’t have what you think you need, whether it be a new pair of trainers or a new phone, sometimes just taking drugs is enough to fit in. Just taking drugs is enough to feel part of some sort of thing that is going on, to take you away from how insecure you are feeling.
I would think I would maybe address it before it gets to a point where teenagers are going and using drugs, and address the ones showing signs of misbehaving and of vulnerability, taking them aside and getting them support before it goes too far. I wouldn’t know where to start, but you go into a school—I was a very problematic child, who was given behaviour support—take that person aside, one to one, and see what is really going on for them. I know it is time-consuming, but this problem is only going to get solved by putting in time and effort.
Q65 Ross Thomson: Can I first say thanks to all of you for coming down and being with us today to talk about your own stories? We will only ever get something done or change stuff when people are brave enough to open up and talk about it, so genuinely, thank you very much. My question might sound quite simple or straightforward, but I’d really appreciate your thoughts. I want to understand a little bit better where your first exposure to drugs came from. I know everyone has a different story, but I want to see if there is a theme. For example, Colin talked about peer group. Was it friends? Was it maybe in the household, because other family members used drugs, and you always had that exposure? Was it on an experimental basis because you went to a house party on a night out and there was something there? I am trying to understand where the first exposure to drugs came from and how it led on to more consistent use, if that makes sense. Any thoughts or experience you have got would be useful.
Sharon Brand: I grew up with both my parents being alcoholics, so my first exposure to any kind of substance was through my family. It continued right through my teenage years.
I never had much of a social life as a child. I was quite isolated. I was kept at home, so every point of reference to how the world should be came from them. Yes, that is definitely where it started off for me.
Hannah Snow: I had quite a dysfunctional upbringing, with a lot of alcohol. I had family members who were heavily involved with drugs and prisons. I visited prisons at a young age, so that was never really a deterrent to put me off it. It was the norm. It was normal. It was un-normal not to go home and have people fighting. I used to go to friends’ houses and think “whoa.” That was the way it was, unfortunately.
Scott Ferguson: My family, my brothers and sisters and that were caught in addiction. I lost my wee brother on my birthday about 24 years ago to methadone. I lost my older brother just in December to addiction as well. You can say past experiences as a kid were maybe trauma or whatever. There is also adverse childhood experiences in your community—all that stuff. You can pinpoint all that stuff. That is all cliché about why you want addiction. I got to an age in my life when I knew I was doing the wrong thing, but I still chose to do it. I tried to fit in with my peers.
I think now it is not about looking at people’s backgrounds and what made them take drugs. You need to look at what you can do to solve the drug problem today, and there is not going to be any quick fix. When I lost my brother in December, I knew for a fact he wouldn’t have been able to hand in a clean drug test for at least a year and a half, but he was still on 90 mg of methadone, still on pregabalin and still on diazepam. So I think the services need to look at stuff like that.
Q66 Chair: In what we hear from the people we have asked to give us evidence and to speak to us about issues around problem drug use, these are the themes that keep on coming back, again and again. We hear issues of deprivation, of childhood traumas. I know that is a term that people perhaps do not feel particularly comfortable with, but there always seems to be this trigger point. Some 90% of people could use drugs and have no issues or difficulty with it at all, but 10% of people get caught up with drug use that becomes a particular problem. What we are trying to do—Ross’s questions lead to this—is to understand what particular issues there are.
There is one other thing I would be interested to hear your views on. We spoke to some people with real-life experience yesterday. There was an idea of personal asset. It is a weird phrase, but it is saying something like: you’re middle class; you get involved in drug use; it might start to become a bit problematic, but you’ve got inter-relationships, you’ve got community, you’ve got support—you’ve got money. Hearing from you, Colin, you don’t seem to have that as part of your community; and there were other types of pressures. I am just trying to find out what it is that makes problem drug use, as opposed to drug use where people get through to the other end.
Hannah Snow: I am eager to talk about this. You’re saying that 90% of people take drugs and can take it or leave it, but 10% of people take drugs and can’t. The simple answer is that that 10% of people are addicts. My own view and opinion is that addiction is a disease. It is a disease that is incurable, but it can be arrested, and it can be cured in the sense of changing your thinking and the way you act.
When I got into recovery, I had been diagnosed with anxiety, depression and borderline personality disorder, and was on all different kinds of medications. You are talking about prescription drugs. After a substantial time of abstinence, I didn’t have these problems; it was the drugs that were causing it. You can now go to a drugs service that will refer you to a programme that gives you methadone prescriptions. When I was 19, I got put onto a methadone prescription. Within six months, I went from 30 ml of methadone to 120 ml. I was going to appointments and expressing to them, “Look, I’m struggling; I can’t stop using drugs.” Their answer was to put my methadone up. Once you’re in that, and you can’t find a way to get out of that, it is easier to stay there. Getting clean is the hardest thing I have ever done, but it is the most beneficial thing in my life.
Chair: Did you want to say something, Scott?
Scott Ferguson: Sorry. What was the question again?
Q67 Chair: Most people can use drugs without having any difficulty or issue. What it is about the 10% of people who have these difficulties? Why is that the case? Why does it become a problem for some people?
Scott Ferguson: I think the hardest people to reach who are problematic drug users are maybe the ones who are holding down jobs, have a car, and have not lost their family yet. They’re maybe just doing it Friday till Monday, but their life is still chaotic. I’m meeting loads of guys and girls who come in looking for help because maybe their partners are starting to notice; they’re starting to get bad at their jobs. For them, the guilt and shame in coming to look for help is quite difficult, but you know, that doesn’t matter.
The drug trend up in Scotland is more cocaine. It is people who have a bit of money, but they are starting to lose everything. It doesn’t matter if people are deprived. Deprivation still has a big part to play up in Scotland, but there is more of the affluent community coming into addictions now.
Chair: Thank you. We have now got a few questions from Tommy, Danielle and John.
Tommy Sheppard: Thanks for coming. It’s great that you’re here and very helpful to us. One of the things we are going to be considering over the course of the next few months, as we look into this, is whether the fact that all of this activity is currently described as criminal, illegal activity makes things better or worse, or makes any difference at all. That is a debate we are going to get into. I would be interested in any thoughts you guys have on that, from the experience you have had. Clearly, you have all used illegal drugs, and the fact that they were illegal did not prevent it. What effect did the fact that you had to get your drugs illegally have? Did it mean that you were taking stuff that you did not want to take? Could you describe something about it? Also, Scott and Hannah, you said that you had been in prison. Did the process of coming up against law enforcement and dealing with that help or did it make it worse? What should we be doing in the future to try to prevent what happened to you happening to other people?
Scott Ferguson: I would have walked on glass to go and get my drugs. Whether it was a street full of glass with a plain-clothed officer at every closed door, I would have still walked down that street. Would I probably have been apprehended? No.
Portugal and Canada have gone down a good route. They are decriminalising a lot of the drugs and it is working. People who are carrying small amounts of personal use drugs on them—that needs to be decriminalised, because it is taking money out of the healthcare pot and taking money out of the criminal justice pot by imprisoning them every time, or by putting them into different services, including the criminal justice service, all the time.
I think they need to be put into programmes. They need to be put into recovery-based stuff. When they go to use the safe injecting rooms in Portugal, they are going in there and meeting with a healthcare worker, or speaking to somebody, and they are getting signposted to help and to recovery services. That is what needs to be done in Scotland.
I interviewed Nicola Sturgeon about six months ago and I put that point across to her about how she felt about the safe injecting rooms. She is all up for it, and Holyrood is all up for it, but I said, “What’s holding you back?” and they said, “Westminster”. I do not know what it is with their attitudes or whatever—I cannot do their thinking for them—but they need to give Scotland their own legislation. When cases start working, they will maybe say when they look back, “If that’s the case, why not make it UK-wide?”
Hannah Snow: I experienced custodial prison sentences for supply of a controlled substance, so selling drugs, and possession of drugs, is not a deterrent—for me, anyway; I can only speak for myself. When you are in an environment like that, it is more street credit than anything else. A person has to be at a specific point in their life where they want to change. It does not matter what services and processes you put on them, whether it is a court order or a prison sentence or a fine. If they are choosing to live that lifestyle, they are going to live that lifestyle.
I agree with Scott in the sense that, when you go up in court, what benefits are you getting from sending a known drug user into prison to do a drug sentence, who will get released to do the same thing? Enforce an order that has to put them through a recovery-based programme, instead of putting them into a criminal procedure programme where the cycle just starts again. If you go up in court for drugs use, and you are then enforced to go to a recovery programme, you have a better chance of changing your life in that than you do of changing your life in prison.
Q68 Danielle Rowley: This might tie in a bit. I know from my community that a lot of people try to access recovery, and it takes a lot of trying for it to work sometimes. Scott, you said that it was not until you were actually shown compassion and care that your proper recovery started, and that methadone was actually a barrier to your recovery. For all of you, what main barriers to recovery have you experienced, and what changed that and helped you to be able to start a proper recovery journey?
Colin Hepburn: I was actually encouraged to go on methadone by a partner. I was told that I would be on it for six weeks to stabilise and then six weeks to detox me off it. Fourteen years later, I found myself in a treatment centre. I was introduced to the recovery communities in Glasgow, probably by accident. I knew there was somebody else in the recovery café and I went up to see them. There was a social aspect that I liked, because I had just come out of a residential treatment centre—whereas before that I was sitting in my own living room using drugs and using alcohol.
It was the social aspect, plus the fact that I knew a couple of the guys from the area. I had used drugs with them in the past. They kind of disappeared after I had seen them, and when that happens you usually think they are dead. They kind of encouraged me to keep coming along. It was probably about four or five months before I got involved in the volunteer area. Then, through that volunteering, I got encouraged to go to college—to just be open-minded to trying other things.
That is partly one of the reasons I am here today. A lot of the stuff I’ve done—I’ve been trying to learn a bit more of that stuff, trying to see where we can make changes, where we can make it better, where we can make it more efficient. I think the recovery communities is a start. Care and treatment services have got a big part to play. I think it is Derby where they have just done a report on addictions, with mental health teams coming together into the one team. They are actually achieving better outcomes and objectives. Evidence-based practice features a lot in care and treatment services, so we need to look at that evidence-based practice, which is pretty positive, and give Scotland the money so they can adopt it in their practices. There will be better outcomes, better objectives—not only for the services and not only for the public purse, but for the people accessing the services, the people desperate for help, and the people that deserve to get help.
Scott Ferguson: What I am seeing today in Scotland, in my place of work, anyway, is that the biggest barrier for people coming into recovery is the benefit system. All services and care practices that work with people with addiction problems—it is all meant to be person-centred approaches. In that person-centred approach, it is the same person and multi-agencies, if need be. So it is a person-centred approach for people with addictions, but they have put this universal credit out there, where one shoe fits all. I have spoken to guys in hospital where they have been in for a 30-day or two-month period with mental health problems, where they have been sectioned, and they have been discharged with an advance payment of universal credit, and have OD’d, and they are back in hospital that same day. I have spoken to guys getting discharged from prison. They have been liberated after maybe a year or a few months or a couple of years’ prison sentence, to an advance payment on that universal credit. They are on methadone. They are in that prison actively using drugs, and they are actively handing in dirty MDT tests so they get discharged to an advance payment on universal credit, and they are OD-ing that day. It is crazy.
Sharon Brand: I think my experience is quite different. I found my recovery through a different way, and I think that the barriers that I faced were quite different, maybe. We have got a lot of experience with young people right now in Dundee. I struggle to verbalise, because our opinions are so different. My barriers were more to do with the treatment service—being prescribed methadone. Quite similar. It wasn’t until I took control of that myself that I then progressed into recovery properly. I think I was very lucky—just fortunate that I met the right people at the right time, because the things that exist now didn’t exist back then. Like Scott says, the recovery community is the first port of call for anybody, whether you are trying to get into treatment or trying to have support during your recovery, or you have got past that and you are now working with people in the community. I think they are utilised in ways that maybe are beneficial to services and the people that work in mental health teams, but not to the recovery community as such, so it can grow in the way it should. It is quite organic and fluid, and changes all the time. Most of the things that we have done in Dundee have been quite successful—the engagements we had with young people. As we spoke about before, we started working with an off-site school back at the start, and now we have kids coming out the other end of that off-site school into the recovery community, having peers advocate for them, getting them into education and employment, helping them into housing and helping them with family conflict. To me, the recovery community is a community. “Recovery” is the word used at the start to describe a group of people who are taking proactive action in their communities to make them better. It just so happens that they have had issues with substances, mental health and things like that.
Q69 John Lamont: I will repeat what others have said: you have all spoken very clearly about your experiences, which undoubtedly will help our understanding of this problem. I want to follow up something that Hannah mentioned. Before I was a Member of Parliament, I was a Member of the Scottish Parliament and I visited Barlinnie prison, Shotts and Kilmarnock and spoke to prisoners. You said something that I heard time and again: in prison, drugs are readily available. I think you spoke about the different types of drugs that you were able to use in prison. You also spoke about how it is easier for the managing of the prison for the prison officers to allow that drug use to continue. I have always found that very surprising, insofar as I always think that when people are in prison, surely that is an opportunity for the NHS and the prisons service to take action to try to address that drug problem.
Do you think there is a fundamental failure in prisons just now, because we are not taking action to address drugs and because it is easier just to allow prisoners to use drugs? Is it round the wrong way how we tackle drug abuse in prison?
Hannah Snow: I think it would be a very, very hard thing to tackle. When you are a criminal and drug user and you need drugs, you will find a way. You will find a way whether that is manipulating, threatening or abusing. Prison staff are taking drugs into the prison. They are supplying drugs in the prison and they are going home and living their lives. To crush that would be a really tough job.
Q70 John Lamont: But do you think we are missing an opportunity? People arrive in prison with a drug problem, like you did. Surely, if we are trying to tackle drug abuse, there is an opportunity. Yes, it will cost more money because it will be much more difficult to manage people when they are coming off the drugs, but there is an opportunity to take action.
Hannah Snow: Yes, there is a definitely an opportunity to take action; there is also an opportunity to look at the fact that while you are in prison, you are in a safe environment where you can detox. Why detox someone off methadone, Suboxone, diazepam and mental health prescriptions, to put them back on a month before they get released? There is a system in place where you go into prison, you give a dirty drugs sample and you then get a detox. That detox comes to an end; you then get offered a methadone scrip.
Personally, I’ve known I’m going to prison so I have gone out and bought drugs, knowing that if I take them and go into prison I will be put on methadone, so I can be out of my face for my whole sentence. I found out how to do that from seeing other prisoners do it. Then I get released or back on a methadone programme. That is the cycle. I got out of prison in 2017; now, 16-year-olds are coming in with crack cocaine and heroin in their system, so they can get a diazepam detox. They then get put on to methadone, and come back into prison three or four months later, aged 17, 18 and 19, and they progress from smoking cannabis to being put on to methadone in prison, to being released and having a heroin addiction.
Q71 John Lamont: Does that not make you all very sad?
Hannah Snow: It’s horrendous.
Scott Ferguson: I work for the Forth Valley Recovery Community and Glenochil, Polmont and Cornton Vale are in the local area. We have been there with a couple of co-workers and trained girls and guys that have been in recovery as volunteers, so that they can run their own recovery cafes with the prison. That has been really successful, especially at Polmont. They have been asking us to go in. In the team meeting recently that I should have been at, two officers there were crying out for more and asking for us to go back in there. I was not aware of that as I was here in London. They said they loved the experience of us going in there talking to the girls and doing stuff in the recovery cafes with them. It is much better than anything a drug worker could go in and do. I can only do so many hours of that as I am caught up with a lot of other stuff. There needs to be a specific pot of funding for recovery cafes or recovery-based stuff in prisons.
Q72 John Lamont: The other point that links to this was mentioned by Sharon. You just happened to meet the right people who pointed you in the right direction, and allowed you to come off methadone and break the cycle of drug use. I am always amazed: if I was to take a dose of methadone it would kill me. Methadone in itself is a powerful drug. Many people are frustrated that a lot of drug-users get parked on methadone, and it is seen as a way of managing and dealing with the problem. Do you think the system is working? Did you just happen to speak to the right people, whereas most people would not have had that opportunity to speak to the right people because the system is breaking down?
Sharon Brand: We have been supporting people that have been on methadone since they were 15 years old. That is thirty years. There are two generations in each family that are now either on methadone or that are chaotic drug-users. I have not got a great opinion of methadone. It could work if it was done right and was done for a very short period of time, but there are more and better ways of helping somebody get past that stage.
Q73 John Lamont: So proper, managed decline of dosage to get them to the point of being completely clear? So you think that too many people are just being left on methadone and not being properly managed off that addiction?
Sharon Brand: I took control of my detox. For three years, I was on a low dose of methadone compared to some people. I reduced it over two weeks, and was advised not to do it. I was told that it would kill me, but I did it.
John Lamont: But if people were to then go through that process in prison, then the idea is that prison officers would be able to manage a challenging set of circumstances created as prisoners went through the declining dose of methadone—the cold turkey process. You could not manage it, could you?
Hannah Snow: No. My personal experience of coming off methadone was that I came off it myself. I poured my methadone down the sink and went cold turkey. A family member locked me in the house for five days so that I could go through the process.
The recovery gets downgraded. A recovery bar is set as being a state of living an ideal life for people, where they want to have an ideal life and get clean from all drugs. But people still on drugs are promoting recovery. There is that barrier there. Where is the bar set for somebody that wants to come off drugs, if they are getting peer-mentored by somebody still on prescription drugs or still maybe on diapezam or methadone? This is happening in recovering communities. That needs to be addressed.
I got into recovery to pursue a life, leave drugs behind and leave that part of my life behind and not be constantly reminded of it on a daily basis. I am now studying, and I have things outside drug use that I am involved with. It is amazing to go into these things and be anonymous, and not have to be reminded every day that I was a drug addict. There is that barrier. When somebody gets clean and they have that support network and a group of people helping them, how do they then progress to the next level of their life, where they can maintain a status in society of just being them? I am just Hannah. I am not Hannah the recovering addict, or Hannah the addict. I am Hannah who is trying to get a degree. I am Hannah who volunteers at my niece’s Brownie club. I am not Hannah the addict and that is what you want to strip from them. They just want to be them. It is amazing that people are setting up recovery and there are all these beautiful things going on in Scotland, but there is a lack of: “How do I just become me? How can I get from a mental, psychotic drug user, whose life was so chaotic and unmanageable, into society and adjust?” There is a lack of processing and funding for that bit as well.
Q74 Hugh Gaffney: Last night there was a debate in the Chamber in Parliament about cannabis. The Minister finished up by saying that we need to look at alternatives. Colin, you have been on methadone for 15 years. That is supposed to be an alternative. No, prescribed drugs—
Colin Hepburn: Not cannabis.
Q75 Hugh Gaffney: No, cannabis was discussed last night. We were trying to think of a way forward. The Minister finished up by saying that we need to look at alternative medicines, to basically change over from drugs to medicines, but Hannah you were saying that they upped your medicine. What I am trying to say is that there is no quick fix, is there?
Hannah Snow: Do they not need to look at—I’m sorry; I am very opinionated on this—maybe taking drugs away? I know that is substantial. I know, after military, the amount of money that pharmacies bring into the Government, but you are giving people methadone prescriptions, pumping people full and they are walking around like zombies. They think that is okay. They are feeding their misery. They are putting them on prescriptions, which is leading to other drugs. That is a vicious cycle.
Personally, I would open more rehab centres. Put them into the rehab centres and detox them. Show them that they can live a life without drugs; they can have happiness, feelings, emotion and joy without deluding their mind full of substances.
Scott Ferguson: Methadone came in for harm reduction back in the late ’80s, because of the spread HIV and all that stuff in Scotland. I was speaking to somebody from the SRC two nights ago on the phone. He was telling me that he was at a thing at the University of Stirling. Pharmaceutical companies were there, talking about buprenorphine. They were trying to put this forward to the Government, but the NHS are holding them back on it—putting buprenorphine into one injection, which the person receiving it will get once a week, and they can still try to hold down jobs.
Methadone, on a daily prescription like that for a length of time, is holding people back. My brother is a prime example. We need to look at shorter usage of prescription drugs and make it more back to harm reduction, rather than a continued long period of time.
Colin Hepburn: I think in the methadone/buprenorphine discussion it was agreed that buprenorphine has a better success rate in England than methadone has in Scotland. If Scotland can adopt the buprenorphine programme and get the same results as England is getting, it will take away the whole stigma of methadone. It gives these guys the ability to try to address their drug issues and their prescriptions, and therefore get a better quality of life.
Q76 Deidre Brock: Thank you very much for coming down and speaking to us so that your experiences can inform the inquiry. We can speak to as many experts in the field as you like, but you speaking to us is so important, so thank you.
I want to ask about attitudes in Scotland generally to problem drug taking. The Scottish Drugs Forum gave evidence to us saying that they thought that Scotland has a pretty judgmental attitude to drug use—more so than elsewhere in the UK. They seemed to be suggesting that there is a stigma attached to it, which is acting as a brake on developing better responses to problem drug use. We can see what is being said in the media.
I just wondered whether you think that that is the case. Do you think that the attitude that people are seeing in the media is causing them not to seriously explore options around things other than methadone use, for example? I know there has been a shift in Scotland from problem drug use being approached through the criminal justice system to it being looked at in a much more holistic public health way. That is a really positive development. Scott, you mentioned that you had a service worker who showed you compassion and spoke to you and heard you for the first time. Maybe that was part of that shift. I don’t know, but I certainly hope that is the case. I just wonder what you think about what you see in the press about drug use and what difference it makes.
Colin Hepburn: The stigma is always going to be present, but we can challenge it. I took on board some of the stigma I saw in the papers and it became a self-stigma towards myself. Then I found stuff with the recovery communities—the Scottish recovery work—and I had to change that mindset. Instead of focusing on my self-stigma—my addiction, my drug use and what people thought of me—I had to change my whole mindset. You have to celebrate your recovery. You’re in recovery. That is a lifestyle that has passed for me. I don’t take drugs anymore. I try to be a productive member of society. I try to help out my community where I can, and I try to help out other communities where I can, in Glasgow and outwith Glasgow.
Sharon Brand: The media have a huge part to play, with the language they use and how they portray people who use drugs or have issues with mental health. Over the last few years, that has slowly changed, but as long as taking drugs is illegal there will always be a stigma attached to drug use or addiction, and those in society who are not immersed in that lifestyle will always have that stance towards people—that lack of understanding and education about where it comes from and why it exists. That also has a huge part to play, but the language and the images the media sometimes use are horrendous. They dehumanise people. They do not treat people as human beings; they treat them as less than that. That has been the case for a long time—since the war on drugs, I think.
Q77 Chair: We are coming to the end of the session. It has been absolutely fascinating. We are all ever so grateful to all of you for helping us out with this so we can better understand some of the issues around addiction and some of the difficulties and problems it can bring. I am perhaps going to be a wee bit unfair to you. You have a group of MPs in front of you who are doing an inquiry on this. If you could recommend to us one thing that would improve the situation for problem drug users—perhaps something that could have helped you in your past—what would that one thing be? I do not want huge answers; just let us know what that thing would be. I can see Hannah smiling, so I am going to come to her first.
Hannah Snow: For me, a 12-step programme of abstinence.
Scott Ferguson: Change the 1971 drug legislation. Give Scotland its own power or change it UK-wide.
Sharon Brand: I agree with Scott.
Colin Hepburn: There have to be more counterintuitive approaches. It is all right being evidence based, but sometimes you need to be radical to shape the change you want.
Q78 Chair: Thank you for that advice. We are going to collate what you have told us today, and that will shape and help us with our inquiry. We are speaking to a number of different groups about all this. We will be speaking to the Ministers responsible for drugs policy. This will be going on until the summer—until July, when we have a recess. After that, we will come back and compile that report in the new Session of Parliament, which is usually in about October. If there is anything else you feel you could usefully contribute—we want to hear from people with lived experience—get in touch with us again and share that with us. Thank you ever so much for being so straightforward and honest with us.
Hannah Snow: Can I ask you a question, just quickly? You are doing this inquiry just now. Over the last 10 years you have been inquiring about the Misuse of Drugs Act in Scotland, and nothing much has come out of it—not a lot of funding. What process do you want to follow? It is all well and good that this is happening and we have been flown up here and put in a hotel, and it is beautiful, but is this more for media and publicity? Is it to prove that Westminster is trying to make a change—trying to cover their arses—or is something going to get done?
Q79 Chair: I’m glad you put that so delicately—thank you for that. We are a Select Committee of the House of Commons, so we have these inquiries and produce reports. Everything about this Committee is evidence-based, so it is all down to what we hear and the quality of the evidence. We are not going to muck about. We will reflect that in our report, and that report will make recommendations based on the evidence we secure. We will then present that to the UK Government, because that is who is responsible to this Select Committee, and they will then respond to that. Obviously, we cannot change the UK Government—that will be up to them—but we are a cross-party Select Committee of MPs and the reports we produce have value because of that.
Hannah Snow: Drug deaths are becoming an epidemic.
Chair: I think you can see the seriousness of the session we have had. We really want to try to do the best we possibly can to get a fully informed report and get the right type of people to tell us exactly what we need to do. On that basis, thank you again. If there is anything else you can help us with, please get in touch.