Douglas Ross calls for legal right to drug rehabilitation treatment

Douglas Ross has called for drug addicts in Scotland to get a legal right to rehabilitation.

Speaking at First Minister’s Questions, the Scottish Conservative leader called for the Scottish Government to support a ‘right to recovery’ bill.

This follows an increased focus on Scotland’s drug problem after the First Minister admitted during the recent election campaign that the Scottish Government had “taken our eye of the ball” on Scotland’s high number of drugs deaths.

Ross said: “Our solution, backed by frontline campaigners, is a right to recovery bill.

“Give people a right in law to the treatment they need.”

He asked whether the First Minister was content to “stop at the basics” or whether she would back the bill and “give people the power to get their lives back on track”.

Nicola Sturgeon responded that she had said at the beginning of the parliament that they would look “in detail” at that and “we are doing that”.

But she said she understood that the proposals for what would be in the bill were all things that were being taken forward from the recommendations of the residential rehabilitation working group.

“My mind is not closed to statutory underpinning,” she said. “What I think we have to be cautious about, though, is waiting for the time it takes to pass legislation before getting on with this work.”