A charter of rights for people affected by substance use has been launched by the Scottish Government, designed to ‘improve the experience of anyone needing support’.
The charter contains ‘key human rights’ drawn from national and international law, including the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, the right to a healthy environment and the right to an adequate standard of living.
Developed by the National Collaborative, which is made up of service providers and people with lived experience, the charter has been recognised as the first of its kind by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Scotland has by far the worst rate of drug-related deaths in the whole of Europe, with 1,172 registered last year. People in the country’s most deprived areas are more than 15 times more likely to die from drug misuse than those in the least deprived, National Records of Scotland (NRS) points out.
‘We want every person experiencing harm from alcohol or drug use to be able access the support they need and through our £250m national mission on drugs we’re taking a wide range of actions,’ said first minister John Swinney. ‘This charter is a key part of that mission and draws on the experience of communities and families affected by substance use. It significantly strengthens our public health and human rights-based approach to substance use-related harms and, over time, it will contribute to significantly improving and saving lives.’
‘Criminalisation and prohibition have failed to reduce drug use and deter drug-related crimes,’ added UN high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk. ‘We need new approaches prioritising health, dignity and inclusion, guided by the International Guidelines on Human Rights and Drug Policy.’
An editorial in the Scotsman, however, stated that it was ‘right to be cynical’ about the charter ‘amid the ongoing scandal over the shockingly high number of drug deaths’ in the country. ‘The 2011 Patient Rights Act created a legal requirement that NHS patients should receive treatment within 12 weeks of it being agreed,’ it said. ‘In the first six years of the law’s existence, it was broken nearly 120,000 times. Earlier this year, 7,146 patients had been waiting longer than two years for treatment on an in-patient or day-case basis, with 1,324 waiting more than three years, and some unfortunate souls left languishing for up to seven. As we argued after Keir Starmer’s attempted relaunch featuring several “milestones” for his government to achieve, ministers should focus less on promising to do things and more on actually doing them.’
Charter of Rights for People Affected by Substance Use 2024 available here