Thematic inspection of police response to drug harm reduction

• Police Scotland has an important role in addressing drug-related harm; however, many of the strategies and approaches outlined in national policy to address Scotland’s problem with drugs require the intervention of Scottish Government, the NHS, local government, and third sector organisations and services.
• While not the lead partner in national efforts to reduce drug-related harm, Police Scotland has made a positive contribution to drug harm reduction through collaboration with key strategic partners and organisations.
• Police Scotland senior officers attend ADP meetings across local police divisions and contribute to the planning and introduction of prevention and intervention approaches, as well as providing direct support and resources to frontline projects in some divisions.
• Police Scotland has highlighted its commitment to work with the Scottish Government and national partners to embed a harm prevention approach to all aspects of public policy – as outlined in its 2030 Vision for Police Scotland.
• It has also made a commitment to take a public health approach to reducing drug-related harm; however, we found a lack of clarity on how the service intends to strike a balance between a public health approach and traditional criminal justice methods.
• Police Scotland continues to be guided by the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, which reinforces enforcement-led practices and is taught as such at the Scottish Police College. This legislation can conflict with public health principles and can lead to confusion about what a public health approach entails in practice.
• We found a lack of clear operational guidance in place for officers (particularly those on the frontline) on how their work contributes to a public health approach. Beyond the overarching goal of reducing drug deaths and drug-related harm, we found no published guidance to support operational delivery on this issue. The term ‘public health approach’ was not well understood across the frontline, nor how it connected to their day to day duties.
• Such lack of guidance and understanding can affect national consistency in the police approach to drug-related crime – for example, whether to employ enforcement action or direct measures.
• In an effort to address this, Police Scotland, Scottish Government, and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) have worked together to increase the parameters and guidance provided to officers allowing for the use of direct measures when dealing with lower-level drug offences (such as possession offences).
• Police Scotland does not have a published strategy on drug harm reduction. This lack of national strategic direction has led to local police divisions developing their own approaches, resulting in locally driven efforts. These align well with national goals but lack overall consistency and co-ordination. Without a well-defined policing purpose and operational direction, efforts risk being fragmented and reactive rather than strategic and co-ordinated.
• Police Scotland has established a Drug Harm Strategy Board to engage with partners and monitor progress against objectives. However, partners highlighted that the group is not operating as effectively as it should and meetings have been infrequent.
• Despite this, we received very positive feedback from a wide range of local and national partner organisations, who described a significant and positive shift in police culture regarding drug harm reduction.
• Partners were particularly positive about the level of support and engagement they received from frontline officers, community officers, and officers working within partnership teams in local police divisions.
• The introduction of naloxone^[3] across police divisions in Scotland has been a very positive step, which is clearly aligned to national policy and the aims and objectives of the National Mission on Drugs launched by Scottish Government in 2021. The national rollout of naloxone, and the comprehensive training programme that supported it, demonstrates an important shift in the policing approach to reducing drug-related harm.
• Police Scotland has taken meaningful steps to reduce stigma and shift police culture around drug use, with trauma-informed practices, lived experience engagement, and naloxone carriage all contributing to a public health-oriented approach.
• Police Scotland works closely with partner organisations in local police divisions to examine and share information relevant to drug-related harm, drug deaths and near-fatal overdoses. This is managed through collaborative meetings referred to as ‘near-fatal overdose’ groups, which are well attended and regularly convened. We found very effective practice in respect of these groups in the police divisions we visited as part of our inspection.
• Police Scotland collaborates with the National Crime Agency, as well as other UK partners, to gather information and intelligence on drug threats, risk and harm. Appropriate information is shared with partners at local and national levels through the Police Scotland Operation ERSO^[4] and the Statement of Opinion (STOP)^[5] units. This gives an assessment of risk and enables partners to respond to specific drug-related threats, which could result in near-fatal overdose or drug-related death.
• Public Health Scotland (PHS) plays a key role in gathering critical information on drug risks and threats, and this is shared with partner organisations across Scotland through the RADAR. PHS and Police Scotland work closely with the Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS), which makes a valuable contribution to the information collated by PHS.
• Information made available through police, PHS, SAS and other agencies is utilised by ADPs to plan, co-ordinate and resource prevention and intervention projects and services to address locally identified problems. However, there is a lack of national consistency in this approach as ADPs tend to operate within the confines of local authority boundaries – often with broad variability in budget and resource.
• The safer drug consumption facility in Glasgow plays a small but significant role in reducing drug-related harm in Scotland. The centre had only been operational for around seven months at time of our inspection; its effectiveness is yet to be evaluated, and the impact will, inevitably, be localised. Police Scotland has collaborated effectively in the development and policing arrangements for the centre.
• Arrest referral schemes lack national oversight and consistency, and operate with significant variation across Scotland, resulting in what partners describe as a ‘postcode lottery’ in terms of effectiveness. However, we also found that Police Scotland has initiated a national conversation with relevant partners on how to improve and redesign the arrest referral system.
• Police Scotland does not have specific outcome measures in place to monitor and assess its performance against public health-related prevention and intervention activities taking place across local policing divisions. However, inspection activity has identified that local divisions drive the majority of this activity through longstanding and effective partnership working arrangements, which make a valuable contribution to reducing drug-related harms.
• While some aspects of police-related activity are monitored effectively, such as naloxone administration, drug seizures and drug-related deaths, there are significant gaps in outcome information on the effectiveness of prevention and intervention approaches and projects.
• We found a lack of national co-ordination of police performance monitoring to identify and share good practice and learning across police divisions. While the national Policing Together team operates an internal substance harm intranet page, it is not effectively serving its purpose as a communication tool as some sections are outdated, and many local officers were either unaware of it or did not engage with it regularly.
• Specialist police teams, such as the Specialist Crime Division, play a critical role in reducing drug-related harms through targeted disruption, intelligence gathering and strategic enforcement, but limited interaction and information sharing with response policing can hinder their full impact.
• Police Scotland provides useful reports to the SPA on a quarterly basis, which mainly focus on details relating to naloxone administration, drug seizures and drug-related deaths, but there is limited reference to the positive progress being made in local police divisions (data which is already gathered in some divisions).

[3] Naloxone is an emergency antidote to overdoses as a result of heroin (or other opioid/opiate) use, which
reverses the suppression of the respiratory system.

[4] Operation ERSO is part of the national police response to drug-related deaths. It aims to ensure that local officers are aware of national trends and information on those drugs causing the most harm.

[5] The STOP unit is a national resource within Specialist Crime Division. Its officers are specially trained, and are considered as expert witnesses by courts.