the pursuit of oblivion

Problem is that a society with a large proportion of drug addicts costs loads of money to sustain. We have to pay for the costs of crime, health treatment, lost income, because many don't/won't work and contribute taxes. Plus they don't make a contribution to society - they don't create any wealth to the community at all. This is a generalisation and doesn't apply to all hard drug users, but I think this is a problem with the type of core hard drug using community we currently have in Shetland. And of course unless there is some radical change to greater society we tax payers have to pay their benefit costs etc. that most of them qualify for. So it's a huge cost to society whatever your view is on them. If the council is trying to cut costs then a good idea would be to work with this segment of society and the kids at risk of turning to drugs later. In my view the problem is so acute up here that the savings in doing this could easily equate to the costs of running schools and could be an argument against further closures. Why do we have so many young people turning to hard drugs up here? Whats the reason? If we could solve that then we would be some way to a solution. At the moment nothings happening and this is only going to get worse. Do nothing and this only gets worse for everbody.

Is anyone else concerned about where Shetland is going? I guess from previous posts it is clear I have a major concern about the lack of real focus into the hard drug problems in Shetland. Having observed the new chief executive in action over the past year I don't see any realisation or awareness of the biggest threat to quality of life in our community for years! Or the biggest sign that we have serious flaws in our society - whatever way you look at it. Anybody watching the scheme on BBC 1 Monday evening will see a guy shooting up heroin for breakfast along with 30 diazepams and a can of extra strong cider. Looks unreal - yet this would not be out of place up here. We have our own Onthank and Knockinlaw schemes starting to develop in Lerwick and some other parts of Shetland already. Once these become established heroin will never be eradicated far less controlled and we will all suffer the consequences. IMHO the dogs are a complete false prophet giving the wrong impression that something is being done to tackle this issue. This then gives the council a getout and an excuse for not providing proper solutions. As hard drug use has steadily grown since their introduction it is clear that sniffer dogs are not the answer. The council needs to wake up to this problem, get into the families, work out why this is happening and find ways of slowing it down or preventing it. Authentic, serious, properly researched, professionally delivered initiatives are urgently required. I see no evidence that this is happening or even that the problem is recognised. Even the sheriff making a statement against drug dealers as he locks up another patsy who has been forced by the real dealers to carry their hash to Shetland. How can that make a difference to anything? Every smack addict in Liverpool is a potential drugs mule so it's not likely they're going to run out of couriers any time soon. In my view Alistair Buchan came up from Orkney where nothing like this exists. The councillors are all at the other end of society and have no notion of this problem and I don’t think they would even believe it could happen in their cosy world of fiddle music and Norsemen’s homes. Alistair has been told he is here to save money and in the enthusiasm to carry out his instructions this critical issue has been totally missed. But waken up, this is happening on your watch. Meagre resources seem to be allocated to sorting it and you seem unaware that the problem even exists. There is a sub society out there in Shetland and it is growing fast. It can maybe be kept under a stone for now but soon it will be a massive problem and concern. And never mind cuts to schools, the longer this goes ignored the higher the cost to solve it. We have had the opportunity to tackle it and done nothing. If it continues to grow at this rate we will not be able to afford the money required to deal with it and we will end up like Kilmarnock and other mainland towns with these ghettoised schemes and all the problems and cost to society they bring. Then the £700,000 to close Scalloway JHS will be small fry. Don't think this is scaremongering, read this post in five years time! Any councillor or senior council official who may read this forum and hasn't seen the scheme, watch it on Monday evening. This is where we are heading in Shetland at the moment, and with gathering pace and little restraint! Alistair Buchan will probably be back in Orkney before the BBC decides to choose Shetland for their next voyeuristic documentary on lost society. But he should be aware that he was the man in charge in the middle of it, and did nothing!

Thanks, I think this hits the nail of the debate firmly on the head. For some strange reason a charitable group of non qualified people are bringing some of the greatest influence into the hard drug situation in Shetland. If they were a professional organisation they would be compelled to provide data and statistics to demonstrate their effectiveness. Because they are a charity we know nothing about whether this works or not. Sure it may help find stashes dealers have hidden in their houses but does it reduce hard drug use in Shetland? Because of the sniffer dog charity status they seem totally unaccountable to anybody. It is clear they have affected the illegal drug supply chain into Shetland in some manner. Now has this affect been positive or negative in terms of young people moving into hard drugs? This is what we need to know in order to understand and deal with the escelating hard drug problem Shetland has acquired since the sniffer dogs arrival. Jeez . Couldn't government just train and employ experts on this subject to do this for us? I am sure the sniffer dog charity is run by nice people with good intentions but my granny was a nice person and she thought societies ails would be solved if everyone went to the kirk on Sunday night! Good intentions do not necessarily bring good solutions. IMHO it is so complex it frightens me that there appears to be so little emphasis on using properly qualified people to lead the policies on solving the hard drug problems that have now evolved up here.

Thanks for all the comments. It appears that there are a lot of people out there who are dubious about the effectiveness about the sniffer dogs. You guys seem to have the most reasoned arguments too. However it would be more enlightening and interesting to hear a properly reasoned case for supporters of this policy. Anybody care to post something with some evidence for its usefulness? - apart from saving the police the bother of searching dealers houses themselves! I can't think of any crime wave currently affecting Shetland apart from hard drug abuse so this would seem to be the best use of police time for me, for the time being anyhow. Genuinely, it would be helpful to know what real effect the sniffer dogs are having on reducing hard drug use in Shetland. I agree with the post about the posters at airports etc. They may as well be "welcome to Shetland all hard drug dealers". And I also thought it was terrible for the folk festival ferry to be met by a sniffer dogs. What kind of signal does that send out? These are all international people who may spread the word about the problem and that may even attract more dealers to look at this market. In any case it doesn’t seem such a smart thing to do from any perspective I can think of. If sniffer dogs are effective then somebody should prove it with hard facts, statistics and evidence. It is not just about seizure but about the reduction in users which should be the main objective. Otherwise I believe it's time for a re-think for a different strategy. Somebody said to me recently that Shetland's hard drug problem in a contained island like this offered a great opportunity for some new imaginative thinking on how we can reduce hard drug use. It would be some achievement if we could move to that position instead of regurgitating flawed, hackneyed policies that have been proven to fail all over the world, time and time again. That’s the way it looks to me anyway, with the current absence of any evidence to the contrary.

I am new to this forum but joined as it seems the only safe place to discuss drugs in Shetland without being stigmatised for your views. Many people I talk to are concerned about the effectiveness of dogs against drugs but are frightened to raise this in public in case they are seen as being in favour of drugs. I am in this category. Now Shetland is getting more dogs. http://www.shetnews.co.uk/component/content/article/36-latest-new/360-second-dog-to-join-anti-drugs-charity.html A lot of people think there is a very strong correlation between the initial introduction of the dogs and the rapid acceleration in the heroin problem in Shetland that followed shortly afterwards. Orkney didn't introduce sniffer dogs and have nothing like the problems we have experienced. It is claimed that the dogs could easily smell strong odours from cannabis and because of its bulk it was the main drug that reduced when the dogs were first introduced. This left a vacuum for dealers to fill with more easily secreted heroin and the rest is history. I understand it is still the case now and Shetland is a community that is mainly focused on hard drugs as the dog’s effect on the supply chain is to reduce profit and interest in transporting softer drugs. Now this is all fairly basic economics. You press a segment in the supply chain and you affect some result. Unfortunately it appears that the dogs may be contributing to the very problem they are designed to resolve. This fear may be abated if it is highly trained professional people with experience in illegal drug use who are behind the dogs against drugs. But again unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case. Somebody who seems quite good at removals and somebody who has done well in the oil industry seem to be heavily involved in extending this policy further. I have looked at some of the debates on this board and have read several books on this subject. It is very complex and seems to me to need incredibly smart people to come up with the answers. I am not sure if handing over the controls to amateurs in this field is really the answer. No disrespect intended. Perhaps Petrofac's £60,000 would be better used funding a thorough investigation into the drugs problem in Shetland carried out by fully qualified independent professionals making recommendations as to how best to tackle it. Maybe they could discover why heroin use exploded after sniffer dogs were introduced. It would be nice to know the real reasons for the situation in Shetland. Then we might be able to deal with it.