18 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| August 2012
Profile |
David Liddell
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
W
hen Scottish Drugs Forum (SDF) director
David Liddell was awarded an OBE in the
recent Queen’s birthday honours (
DDN
,
July, page 4) he made sure that the kudos
was shared, issuing a statement that the
award was a ‘testament to the efforts of the incredibly gifted
and committed people – professionals, drug users and their
families’ that the organisation worked alongside.
‘It’s almost an embarrassment to some extent, but it’s obviously
really gratifying to have that recognition for myself and the SDF, as
we’ve been together for 26 years now,’ he says. ‘The nature of the work
is to focus on what needs to be done rather than looking for recognition
for ourselves, but everyone here was very pleased.’
After training as a biochemist then realising that it wasn’t for him, he
went into volunteering, and it was at the Dublin Committee for Travelling
People that he developed an interest in substance issues. ‘It was the early ’80s,
working with travelling children – that was my first experience of homelessness
and things like glue sniffing,’ he says. ‘We actually set up – controversially, at the
time – a very early harm reduction intervention, working with young glue sniffers.
From there I went into social work and then to [DrugScope forerunner] the
Standing Conference on Drug Abuse (SCODA).’
It was during a SCODA study of Edinburgh’s drug problems that the SDF concept
came up. ‘The idea was to set up a Scottish SCODA. We had a steering group, and in the
way these things often go, its first decision was to become autonomous from England.’
At the beginning the SDF staff numbered three, working in a sector that was
similarly tiny. ‘In 1986 there were only 20 drug services in Scotland – now there’s
about 240,’ he says. ‘It was a very small field and most services only had about two
staff, so there were no more than 40 or 50 people involved in total. There were no
planning structures and just a couple of officials in the Scottish Office who were
dealing with drugs issues. Everyone was learning together, in a sense.’
The forum hit the ground running, however, having been established just as the
heroin epidemic in Scottish cities was taking off, and he was one of the people
urgently calling for the introduction of needle exchange. Was it a tough job to
convince people or were the arguments just too strong? ‘The powerful arguments for
the Conservative government were obviously around public concern over the spread
of HIV to the general population. It did need a fair bit of pushing, but ultimately
there was no way the government could argue with that. Substitute prescribing was
a lot harder. Initially it was only people who were HIV-positive who had access to
methadone. We argued very strongly for appropriate distribution.’
The SDF remains a powerful advocacy voice, with its proposal to set up a formal
national
emergency
plan to deal with
incidents like the
anthrax outbreak recently
accepted by the Scottish Government
(
DDN
, June, page 5). ‘We played a
key role [in the outbreak] in terms
of disseminating essential
information and briefing
frontline workers, as we
were best placed to
deliver that,’ he says.
‘There have been recent
HIV cases among drug
users in Glasgow, so
obviously the issues are
not completely separate
Man of
HONOUR
David Liddell used his recent
OBE to draw attention to the
work of professionals, service
users and their families. He
talks to David Gilliver about
the challenges facing the
sector north of the border