So here we are, its 9am on a Thursday morning and you're a heroin user waking up in Scotland. Its cold and you need a hit. You can get yourself down to the Community Drugs Team but you know you're going to be facing a 4 week wait for assessment and then another 4 weeks or maybe months until you finally get a script. Even at the most optimistic if you're using twice a day thats a potential 112 chances between now and getting treatment that you could get infected with anthrax. You can try and buy some methadone or some buprenorphine on the burgeoning black market for substitute drugs - but price has obviously been shooting up since the anthrax deaths. You can get together with some mates and see if you can get a car drive down into England and buy in bulk down there - but that's risky too. Or you can go out and score, take a chance and buy street gear. And you can hope that this isn't going to be your time. That it will be ok.

Tags: Harm Reduction

A new report has been published which looks at the functionality and status of DATs and other local drug partnerships. In equal measure optimistic and critical, the report makes a series of recommendations about how local structures could be supported to better implement national strategy - while prioritising the needs of people directly affected by drug use and local communities.