Scottish Conservative leader says Sturgeon has ‘given in to the drug dealers’

Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross has accused First minister Nicola Sturgeon of having ”given in to the drug dealers” over new reforms.

The Scottish government announced earlier this week that police would henceforth be advised to issue a ‘recorded police warning’, rather than arrest, persons in possession of drugs, including Class A substances such as heroin and cocaine.

In an opinion piece published by the Daily Telegraph today, Mr Ross lamented how drug deaths in Scotland had increased over the past seven years, “leaving us [Scotland] with the highest death rate in all of Europe.”

He went on: “This has happened entirely on Nicola Sturgeon’s watch. It is her crisis and it will be her legacy.”

He criticised the fact that “The change was announced with no debate in the Scottish Parliament. It didn’t even go to a vote.” adding, “This is clearly wrong. Such a radical overhaul of our justice system deserves the appropriate scrutiny,” and added that his party’s “Right to Recovery Bill” was a superior solution.

Labour leader Keir Starmer has backed the reforms, and went on to suggest that he would support employing such measures across the UK, saying it was “probably the right thing to do.”