Dan Wootton: Sturgeon is waving the white flag in the war on drugs

A terrifying vision of an SNP-run Scotland with Sturgeon as President is emerging. The country already has the worst drug death rate in Europe, a crisis which deepens by the year with no tangible action from the devolved government.

And now – in one of the most idiotic policy decisions in recent history – Scotland has effectively decriminalised drug possession.

In a decision quietly announced by the lord advocate Dorothy Bain QC, anyone in Scotland caught with Class A substances will now only receive a police warning rather than face prosecution.

Class A drugs! You know the likes of cocaine, Ecstasy, LSD, crystal meth, crack cocaine and, oh, heroin! Have they gone stark raving mad?

The government says they will still go after drug dealers, but we know how difficult that is. And these drug dealers are going to have a hell of a lot more business with the change in these rules which will spark an explosion in casual drug use in Scotland.

Now I know what the pro drug lot will say: Adults can handle drugs if they’re produced properly and sold responsibly. Well I call baloney on that. I know so many people in my own life whose descent into drugs started with the odd puff of marijuana and ended with a crystal meth addiction.

Selling heroin in Boots isn’t going to change that! For every white-collar druggie who thinks they can handle their cocaine on the weekend, there is the tragedy of someone whose life is destroyed. So much of the current mental health epidemic has been created by drug use.

So many families have been torn apart by addiction. As Jamie Greene, the Scottish Conservative justice spokesman, put it…

“Scotland’s drug death crisis is our national shame but the way to tackle it is to improve access to treatment and rehabilitation, not to dilute how seriously we treat possession of deadly drugs like heroin, crystal meth and crack cocaine.

“The answer to our drugs crisis is more access to treatment, not this de facto decriminalisation by the back door of drugs that are the scourge of our streets and our society.”

If Sturgeon thinks waving the white flag on the policing of drug use is the ticket out of her appalling addiction and drug death crisis then she is severely mistaken.