Peter Krykant became the poster boy for a drug policy which is resistant to scrutiny

In death, as in life, Peter Krykant attracted attention.

The drugs campaigner from Falkirk, who died earlier this month aged just 48, was remembered in national obituaries, early day motions at Westminster, and a formal motion of condolence at Holyrood.

The first minister called him “a powerful voice on drugs policy reform [who] leaves an important legacy which will be remembered”.

He has left behind a grieving family, including two young sons, as well as many friends. Hopefully they will get some comfort from the tributes.

I didn’t know Krykant except through his public profile. He seemed to appear from nowhere and was suddenly everywhere: on TV, before Holyrood committees, in newspapers, even “on tour” with his “safe injecting van”, bought in 2020.

His story was irresistible to journalists and some politicians. Addicted to drugs by his teens, he served time in jail where he learned to inject, yet now he was clean and campaigning. Whippet-thin and articulate, he became a kind of anti-celebrity.

Last week, however, two respected voices from the recovery community who knew Krykant, not just as a campaigner but as a person, published reflections that should give all policymakers pause.

The first, by Darren McGarvey in UnHerd, was titled ‘The Dark Truth about Peter Krykant: Scotland’s drugs activist had fallen back into addiction’.

McGarvey, author of the Orwell Prize-winning Poverty Safari, says that Krykant began using drugs again shortly after acquiring the van that made him famous. It was, he says, “an open secret among politicians, charity workers and journalists”.

I was shocked to read this, although a deep dive into the coverage shows it was known at the time. 

It was seldom cited in any of the political stories citing Krykant as an expert on drugs policy, or the speeches hailing his approach as the future. 

He became the go-to guru for anyone promoting the harm reduction argument, that is, helping addicts “use safely” is more important than helping them get clean.

McGarvey accepts harm reduction has a role in saving lives. But he warns that when someone with a severe addiction is told that drug use can be “safe,” it may legitimise behaviours that lead back to chaos.

He notes that the best years of Krykant’s life, which brought marriage, fatherhood, work and friendship, were rooted in abstinence-based recovery. That was rarely mentioned in the glowing profiles.

McGarvey suggests that Krykant, in relapse, became hostile to the recovery community that had once sustained him. That is beyond sad, because losing that support network must have made him doubly vulnerable.

The second article, on Substack, by Annemarie Ward of the charity Faces and Voices of Recovery, adds more striking, troubling detail.

She first met Krykant in 2018 and recalls his clear irritation that she did not know who he was. “It revealed something subtle about his desire to be seen and recognised,” she writes.

Perhaps that desire became another form of addiction, one fed by the spotlight of political and media attention.

Ward says she sensed when Krykant relapsed and tried to raise the alarm, only to be dismissed as “jealous” or “moralising”. She writes: “I watched him get swept up, championed by organisations, political figures and media voices. Not because he was grounded in recovery, but because he was useful.”

Ward argues that Krykant was used to promote a single narrative, the one that leads to total decriminalisation of hard drugs as the only solution. Her own charity advocates for more rehab beds and long-term recovery support.

Both McGarvey and Ward’s articles describe tensions and differences in ideologies driving the drugs issue which are seldom reflected in the debates which reach national media or parliament.
Most people are likely unaware there is a strand of activist thinking that sees even the use of deadly opioids as a legitimate choice to be respected. But there is a big difference between destigmatising the drug user and celebrating drug use itself which, incredibly, is what some groups favour. 

The argument is often framed in a polarised way – blaming punitive drug laws for deaths and arguing for more harm reduction measures. Abstinence is dismissed as old hat though it has saved many lives.

In reality, Scotland has treated addiction as a public health issue for decades, with harm reduction as the central pillar.

In the 1990s, I reported on Calton Athletic, the recovery group in Glasgow’s East End, whose founder David Bryce warned against the dominance of the methadone model of harm reduction. The group could not get funding because they refused to bow to what, even then, was the establishment position.

For similar policies to be presented now as something new and game-changing is quite the thing. What is in fact happening is a sort of radical escalation toward full legalisation. Extreme harm reduction, if you like.

What began as a pragmatic attempt to improve health and wellbeing has morphed into an ideological movement, resistant to scrutiny and dismissive of alternative approaches. Policymaking by purity spiral rather than evidence. 

Reading the striking pieces by Ward and McGarvey, it seems clear that Krykant was pulled into that spiral.