Help Talking-up Scotland keep going

Crowdfunder at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-talking-up-scotland-keep-going

Or by direct bank transfer to: JOHN WATSON ROBERTSON Sort Code – 08-91-04 Account – 12266421

By Mark E. Saunders of “The Scottish Minuteman” https://www.facebook.com/profile.php/?id=61575625542197

Scotland is regularly described as having the highest drug-death rate in Europe.

Although there is an argument to be made that this comparison is based on a false equivalence, today has been no different.

And as a quick-fix, Reform UK MSPs are scapegoating and supporting calls for the abolition of the Scottish Parliament.

But what exactly would abolishing Holyrood achieve?

Scotland’s drug problem did not begin with devolution.

It began decades before it.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Scotland developed a particularly large population of heroin users. Many lived in communities hit by poverty, unemployment and deindustrialisation.

For some, heroin became a way of escaping from a world before devolution. A world created when Scotland was entirely governed at a UK level.

Some people reading this will remember those days.

The days when entire communities, families and friends were thrown under the economic bus.

That history matters.

But it doesn’t explain everything that is happening today.

Because the times have changed.

And, more importantly, the production and supply of drugs have changed.

Today’s drug-death crisis is not simply the continuation of the heroin epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s.

The drug supply has become increasingly unpredictable.

The criminal drug gangs of London and Liverpool have targeted a pre-existing condition in Scotland, turning addiction into a highly profitable and deadly business.

People are now dying after taking combinations of artificially concocted substances, often without knowing exactly what they are taking.

So the problem has changed.

Shouldn’t the response change with it?

And that is where Holyrood matters.

Why would we respond to a changing drug problem by abolishing the Parliament that allows Scotland to develop its own response?

The UK’s main drug-control legislation remains reserved to Westminster and criminalises possession and control of controlled drugs. Scotland, within its devolved powers, has increasingly pursued a public-health approach to drug harm.

So perhaps the answer isn’t to abolish Holyrood.

Perhaps devolution in Scotland, or better still, Scottish independence, may yet prove to be part of the real cure.

Which brings me back to Reform UK.

When Reform UK MSPs call for the abolition of the Scottish Parliament, I have one very simple question.

Other than continuing to show their disdain for a Scottish voice:

Why?

If the problem existed before devolution, and the production and supply of drugs have changed since then, how does abolishing devolution solve it?

That’s a considerably more complicated question than:

“Scotland has a drug problem. Abolish Holyrood.”

But perhaps complicated doesn’t mean difficult to understand.

Perhaps it just means Reform UK politicians need to stop shouting:

“STOP THE BOATS”

and start shouting:

“STOP THE GANGS.”

Surely even Reform UK politicians in Scotland can understand that.

Help Talking-up Scotland keep going

Crowdfunder at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-talking-up-scotland-keep-going

Or by direct bank transfer to: JOHN WATSON ROBERTSON Sort Code – 08-91-04 Account – 12266421