Bonkers SNP plan to legalise drugs will break Scotland – this madness must stop

The script is all too familiar – a public servant loses his moral compass, there’s a huge drugs problem, a camper van appears and there’s no shortage of alleged criminality. Netflix viewers will immediately think of the hit show Breaking Bad about the chemistry teacher turned drugs baron Walter White but, in fact fiction, seems to be increasingly becoming reality in Scotland. The truly bonkers announcement today that Humza Yousaf’s SNP Scottish nationalist government wants to make drugs possession legal north of the Border seemed liked a terrible punchline to a very bad joke which has been running since the party’s chief executive Peter Murrell and later his wife Nicola Sturgeon were arrested over disappearing cash. We have had their mysterious camper van appear at Murrell’s mother’s home, there is no shortage of alleged criminality and now Yousaf wants to allow addicts to feel free to possess class A drugs on Scotland streets. The SNP really is Breaking Scotland (and that, by the way, was the opinion of a shocked SNP politician!). Humza Yousaf wants to legalise drug possession in Scotland (Image: Getty) The reality is though that this policy is not about drugs. It is about addiction. If it was justs about drug then Scotland would not be the worst place for drugs deaths in Europe. With this policy that Scotland could be pushing to be a global leader for drugs deaths instead as every addict in the UK makes their way to Edinburgh, the scene of another heroin-fuelled classic Trainspotting. The real addiction in question is the SNP’s addiction to independence, grievance and victimhood. Since the resignation and arrest of Sturgeon and her husband, the independence agenda appears to be slipping somewhat in the Scottish agenda. As one Scottish Labour figure told me: “People are less worred about the constitution than they have been for years that means at last they are focussing on the SNP’s catastrophic failures in education, the NHS, policing, drugs deaths, well everything really.” A scene from Breaking Bad with teacher turned drugs baron Walter White (Image: Netflix) Whether it is an inability to build ferries or the dropping of their school outcomes in the legal tables as England rises above Scotland, the SNP need to move the agenda back to the only thing they care about – independence. But that is difficult to do when all the headlines are about your former leader answering questions from the police. The idea that the SNP and crime may be linked is beginning to gain traction. As a Scottish Labour source said: “we made a lot of Partygate, the Tories and Boris but in the end the Tories are just incompetent while it could be that the SNP might have been a criminal organisation. It blows your mind.” For Yousaf, who was handpicked by Sturgeon and her cronies, that is not a comfortable situation to be in. So he has dipped deep into the SNP playbook to find something which can generate anti-Westminster grudge and grievance and make Scotland look like a victim. Almost as soon as the announcement on the new drugs policy came out a veteran Scottish Conservative messaged to say: “It’s an excuse to have a row with the UK Government.” A Scottish Labour figure agreed: “I think they are just trying to create another fight with wm so they can say ‘we’d be able to do something about drugs deaths if we had the power’ would be my guess.” We do not have to remember too far back for a Sturgeon inspired bonkers policy being used in the same way. The UK Government’s sensible decision to invoke never before used powers to block the SNP bill to allow people to self-identify and change the gender from 16 year old including male rapists wanting to go to female prisons, was upheld in the Supreme Court. They hope at the time was that it would generate enough public outrage to push support for independence. Obviously, that plan failed. Now they are trying the same with a ludicrous policy to legalise drugs which they don’t have the power to do. They are hoping that enough Scots believe in their country being a leftwing liberal nirvana free from the strictures of Westminster rule for this to boost support for independence. Even better they will hope that the UK Government will intervene to stop this plan – which hopefully Scottish Secretary Alister Jack will do if the SNP and their even more fanatical Green partners try to pass legislation on legalising drugs. The problem with these policies is that they make Scotland significantly worse off and more dangerous and undermine life expectancy and positive outcomes. But you get the feeling that if breaking Scotland is what the sNP think they need to achieve independence then that is exactly what they will do.