Scottish Government high level action plan in response to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

19: Drug policy

Thematic tags

Right to health; Access to healthcare; Drugs; Young people

Concluding Observation 55a

The Committee recommends that the State Party, along with the devolved governments […] review its legislative framework to adopt a human rights-based approach to drug use, including by: Conducting preventive awareness-raising on the serious health risks associated with drug abuse, particularly among young people.

Context

We take a human rights and public health-based approach to reducing drug deaths. The National Mission is based upon the right to life, health, dignity and respect, and is supported by a commitment to provide £250 million in additional funding from 2021-25. We have made it clear that prevention is key to improving lives and reducing deaths for people impacted by drugs. The National Mission has been developed around six outcomes including harm reduction; treatment; residential rehabilitation; workforce; data and surveillance; and monitoring and evaluation. The latest National Mission Annual Report covers progress in 2024-25.

Key Actions

We will publish an alcohol and drugs plan in early 2026, setting out how we and our partners will reduce alcohol and drug related harms and deaths.

We will publish standards for young people with emerging problematic drug or alcohol use by the end of 2025. The standards will outline what young people aged 25 and under should expect when seeking help for a drug or alcohol problem. Upholding these Standards will ensure young people have local access to consistent and high quality treatment services from an early stage.

We continue to invest in the expansion of the successful routes model which supports young people affected by substance use. As part of the multi-year funding, in 2025-26 we are providing £1.3 million to Scottish families affected by alcohol and drugs to support delivery of the Grow Your Own Routes Project. In collaboration with the Whole Family Wellbeing Fund we have expanded the Routes Programme to six new areas of Scotland.

We are investing another £750,000 in 2025-26 in the Planet Youth pilot in addition to £1.5 million over 2023-25. Planet Youth is an evidence based primary prevention model which empowers communities to support their young people to reduce the risk of substance use and harms. As of October 2025, Planet Youth is operating in 40 schools across 6 areas in Scotland and we will expand into more schools in 2026.

We continue to support the implementation of Sexual Health and Blood Borne Virus Action Plan with £1.7 million per year of funding. This includes supporting work to ensure that people who inject drugs have access to and take up optimal harm reduction services and if deemed clinically ready, antiviral therapy to prevent the onward transmission of infection.

Concluding Observation 55b

The Committee recommends that th e State Party, along with the devolved governments […] review its legislative framework to adopt a human rights-based approach to drug use, including by: Ensuring the treatment of drug use disorder and the provision of healthcare services, psychological support, rehabilitation services and harm reduction programmes for persons who use drugs and considering the adoption of alternatives to the punitive approach and criminal penalties for drug use.

Context

The number of drug deaths in Scotland remains much too high. To date we have launched the Charter of Rights; supported the UK’s first Safer Drug Consumption Facility in Glasgow; worked closely with the UK Government to support the establishment of Scotland’s first drug checking facilities in Glasgow, Dundee, and Aberdeen along with a national testing laboratory; provided £13 million in funding to community and grass-roots organisations supporting over 300 projects; invested £38 million to expand residential rehabilitation capacity; and widened access to life-saving Naloxone.

In 2023 we published A Caring, Compassionate and Human Rights Informed Drug Policy for Scotland calling on the UK Government to introduce immediate legislative changes to support harm reduction measures, arguing for decriminalisation of possession for personal supply, and examining the opportunities for a future debate on strict regulated markets. We continue to engage with the UK Government and hosted a Four Nations meeting in September 2025.

Key Actions

We will continue to fund Glasgow’s safer drug consumption facility, The Thistle Facility, with £2 million annually. This facility provides medical intervention and support to people who may otherwise not have contact with any drug treatment service.

We have committed to funding 1,000 residential rehab placements per year by 2026. Publications from Public Health Scotland suggest that we are making good progress towards meeting our 1,000 placement target by 2026, with a recent publication showing that in 2024-25, statutory funding was approved for 913 residential rehab placements.

We have committed to increasing residential rehabilitation capacity to 650 beds by 2026. This is supported by £38 million investment in eight projects across Scotland.

Healthcare Improvement Scotland are working to support areas across the country to develop and implement their own local protocols by March 2026, following the publication of the National Mental Health and Substance Use Protocol in September 2024. This sets out a gold-standard of joint working between mental health and substance use services for co-occurring mental health and substance use conditions.

We have committed to full and sustained implementation of the 10 Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) Standards in community and justice settings by April 2026. The last benchmarking report, published in June 2025, showed that across all 29 Alcohol and Drug Partnership areas for MAT Standards 1-5, 91% were assessed as fully implemented and for MAT standards 6-10, 75% were assessed as fully implemented.

We are supporting national, and UK surveillance work to develop timely and accurate information on drug trends. This information is used to provide alerts to the public and services regarding harmful drug supplies.

We are reviewing community sentencing by the end of 2025. While evidence suggests that court-ordered treatment is less effective than voluntary treatment, it is still likely to produce more positive outcomes for people than custody.

We continue to support the Scottish Recovery Consortium to deliver the Prison Recovery Project that increases opportunities for people to access recovery support, mutual aid and peer support within prison and creates recovery pathways when people return to their community.

We continue to fund the Prison to rehab pathway programme with up to £21,500 available per placement, which supports individuals who would benefit from accessing abstinence-based treatment, into residential rehab upon release from prison. Since 2021, over 200 individuals have transitioned directly from prison to residential rehabilitation. We have updated our current guidance to make the application process clearer for the individual requesting residential rehabilitation straight from prison and for all the stakeholders involved in supporting the placement.