Who is to blame for Scotland’s drugs crisis? Don’t forget ‘Trainspotting’
Scotland doesn’t have a drugs problem. It has a drugs catastrophe. Last year drugs killed 1,187 Scots, making it by far the worst country in the EU for drugs-related deaths. Scotland’s drugs death rate per capita now exceeds that of the United States. Some 60,000 problem users in a population of 5.4 million means that more than one in a hundred Scots is an addict.
These shocking statistics should shame the Scottish Nationalist Party, which has ruled the country for 12 years and presided over a dramatic worsening of its drugs crisis. These figures, the highest since records began, reveal that only 40 per cent of users in Scotland are receiving treatment, a far lower percentage than in England or other EU countries. Nicola Sturgeon’s government has utterly failed to address the issue, which has got steadily worse since devolution. Its only response to what it admits is an emergency has been to demand yet more powers to be devolved from Westminster.
Yet Ms Sturgeon and her complacent colleagues do not bear sole responsibility for these thousands of preventable deaths. The vast majority die of heroin addiction, although opiates are increasingly common too. The heroin epidemic began in the 1980s, but really took off in the 1990s, when Scotland had been run by Labour for decades. One reason why Labour lost power after devolution was its failure to address long-standing health issues, including drugs, alcohol and obesity. Unfortunately, the SNP has also failed to ameliorate the private squalor that underlies these public scandals.
There is, however, another factor in Scotland’s sickness: the glamourising of the drugs culture. If there is one word that sums up all that has gone wrong with the country, it is this: Trainspotting. Ever since Irvine Welsh’s novel of that name was published in 1993 and made into a film directed by Danny Boyle in 1996, the idea that heroin addiction is somehow cool has been gaining ground.
It is no exaggeration to say that Trainspotting was the most influential Scottish novel of the past generation, nor that the film version enjoys a similar status in the cinematic canon. Welsh has gone on to make a successful literary career and now lives in Chicago. Boyle became a national hero after his display at the 2012 Olympics.
Back on the streets of Glasgow and Edinburgh, however, what has become known as the “Trainspotting generation” of ageing, long-term addicts are dying in ever more alarming numbers. By making heroin abuse the defining cultural identity of his cohort, Welsh has in effect given them permission to disclaim responsibility for ruining their own lives.
The message of Trainspotting is unremittingly nihilistic: “Basically, we live a short disappointing life; and then we die.” And by fêting its author, the Scottish cultural establishment has signalled its approval of the glamorisation of victimhood. One can never prove that books or films cause people to act in a certain way, but they can create a climate in which self-destructive behaviour — in this case heroin abuse — is normalised.
Irvine Welsh owes his country an apology. He has floated his boat on a sea of misery.
