Background: Safer drug consumption facilities (SDCF) and drug checking services (DCS) are interventions that are currently progressing towards implementation in Scotland in response to historically high rates of drug-related deaths (DRD). Recent research in Scotland has explored the potential for, and feasibility of, implementing both interventions in a number of cities. Despite both interventions having the aim of reducing DRD, policy responses and discourses have been markedly different.
Objectives: To critically analyse Scottish (and UK wide) policy discourses concerning these two harm reduction interventions to better understand: how problems are framed; how political barriers and opportunities are conceptualised; and the extent to which these dynamics can be explained by key policy theories.
Methods: We draw on our extensive experiences as academic researchers, advocates, service delivery leaders, public commentators. and political advisors on these topics over the preceding years. The analysis will be informed by Multilevel Governance Theory (Marks, 1993) and Multiple Streams Analysis (Kingdon, 1984).
Results: While SDCF and DCS are important interventions in response to DRD in Scotland, they have progressed through different policy routes. Policy responses to their introduction have been constrained by a combination: of political conflict at both national and regional levels; legislative restrictions; limitations on devolved powers; intense media scrutiny; and tensions between different ways of framing both the causes and potential solutions to the ongoing drug deaths crisis.
Implications: Understanding political drivers of, and barriers to, innovation in harm reduction is critical to developing effective strategies for change and building consensus for action.
I am a Senior Lecturer in Substance Use in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Co-Director of the Salvation Army Centre for Addiction Services and Research (SACASR). My research interests include substance use, vulnerable populations, health inequalities, harm reduction and qualitative methodology. Prior to joining the University of Stirling I completed a PhD at Edinburgh Napier University. My PhD research looked at substance use communication between looked after young people and their formal carers.
James is a specialist in substance use policy, with a background as a researcher, research commissioner, policy advisor and advocate. He was previously Director of Research and Policy at Alcohol Change UK and Chief Executive Officer of Transform Drug Policy Foundation.