AN award-winning academic claims the extent of the drugs problem is underestimated by official figures.

Professor Neil McKeganey, who heads up the Centre for Drug Misuse Research in the city's west end, warned: "The number of people misusing drugs in Scotland, the figure that's bandied about of 55,000 to 60,000, is only what's called problematic drug users - basically what we would see as heroin addicts.

"That is not an inventory of the entire spectrum of drug use in Scotland. In terms of treatment, the drugs budget is in excess of £100m a year.

"The expenditure on drugs in Scotland could easily be half a billion pounds a year, on police, social work, treatment, prevention.

"Despite this, the evidence is that the scale of the drug problem in England is going down and the indications are that it's going up in Scotland, so I think that we are faced with an escalating drug problem whereas our nearest neighbour, their drug problem is reducing.

"We seem to be acclimatised to the scale of this problem now, as if there's nothing we can do about it other than throw huge amounts of money at it.

"If anyone had said 20 years ago where Scotland's drug problem would be now, we would have said there is no way it would get to that level, and yet that's exactly what has happened."