Now that all our heads are clear, having ingested the fact that the cabinet is, apparently, stuffed with penitent middle-class former dopeheads, we can proceed to a rational discussion of drugs, harm and society. Right? What do you mean, of course we can't? Is the moral haze so thick, the acrid aroma of glib sententiousness so strong? I'll take your word for it, if I can avoid inhaling. In fact, I'll have some of whatever it is the politicians are taking. Couldn't do any harm. Who wouldn't buy a drugs policy from people who might confuse methadone with a ghastly-green cough linctus?

This is serious, though. Of course it is. Jack McConnell instituted a review of narcotic harm-reduction procedures in Scotland for the overwhelming reason that little Derek Doran, merely two, died in 2005 because the child got too close to our universal panacea in a shambolic household. Currently, according to the Scottish Executive's best information, 21,000 souls are being treated with the medicine little Derek didn't need.

That's 10% up on the last best estimate. That's upwards of 10,000 near-adults on "daily supervision". That's perhaps 7000 people in charge of children under 16. That's a catastrophe.

Scotland's politicians take this seriously. My customary mockery will do for other times, I think. Even within her own party, Annabel Goldie's determination to hammer away at the methadone issue has raised some eyebrows, but I applaud her for it. An honest Tory pursuing an unglamorous issue is a sight to behold. It happens rarely.

Why so much methadone? The doctors, hedging every ethical bet, say that it works. Or, rather, they say that it works less badly than every other fudged distinction between treatment, control and punishment. Goldie believes that we are merely "parking" a problem - and 21,000 people involves a lot of parking - but that assertion asks, if it does not beg, another question. Or questions.

What do we do instead? To become "drug free" is an enormous thing, these days. Are you booze-free, fag-free, coffee-free? Are you off this pill, that potion, the other stuff? How's the burger habit going, the one that's about to cost the NHS enormous sums in cardiac care? Heroin might be the cheaper option.

We can't have that, though. It offends us in that deep, important, moral way. Junkies aren't just drunk, or fat. Junkies are out of control. Junkies disturb the smooth surface of the social fabric. They steal stuff. Then they invoke a universal horror and screw up their kids. Sometimes.

Upwards of 10,000 have to report daily - to people who could probably live without the business - to get their little plastic cups each day. As a matter of ignorant intuition, that doesn't seem right. So the state is paying to provide a controlled substance that the substance-abuser does not actually want? If you believe Professor Neil McKeganey of Glasgow University, and everyone does, only 4% of these losers is "drug-free" after three years.

Methadone doesn't work. The professor is on record, nevertheless, as preferring it to whatever else the policy-makers happen to be selling. Goldie, equally, has yet to dismiss the efficacy of this particular chemical "crutch". She would like to see smack- my terminology may be out of date - consigned to history. She would really like to see people desist from class-A narcotics. I'd like to see milk and honey flow. It won't happen.

The argument over methadone is, I think, an argument over addiction and the state sponsorship of very bad habits. A little history is therefore in order. When needle-related HIV began to seem like an epidemic in Edinburgh, a few brave, scattered practitioners decided to attempt to shut down the shooting galleries. In Glasgow, where jellies were the problem, methadone sounded like nothing more than another way to ramp up a nasty trade. That philosophical difference has yet to be resolved.

Doctors are entitled to accuse me of crude paraphrase, but the gist remains. Politicians should stop meeting reformed users, and meet a few of the live (near-live) ones. They hate methadone. It does everything less. It fails to answer real and pressing needs. Yet we give it to 21,000 Scots to prevent them from rob-bing, mugging, breaking into your house or distressing your children on the street. Or turning up at your dinner party.

This is the secondary charge, after all. Methadone is mere "social control". I'm none too fussed about the control of junkies, actually. Keep them from the aisles of my Co-Op and I'm content. But they did not cease to have rights because they failed to prefer gin or aerobics. They did not ask for help with a life-threatening problem just so the state could dose them daily with a nice, wee, legal narcotic. That's 21,000, if you forgot, with partners, usually, and children, normally.

Annabel Goldie is right, to that extent: this is an obscenity. What is it that we do to our people, daily, in this, our country? Tiny seaside towns - I'm living in one - in which the guy who sells your paper won't let the smackheads into his shop? Boys off the boats whose only first thought is to find the dealer? After you begin the argument over methadone, appropriate or otherwise, you need to stop and remember what 21,000, a nice round number, represents.

These are, after all, only an approximation of the total of those being "treated". Guess the rest. Not guessing, I suspect that some among you need not speculate. If you are taking time to read this, before the nurse calls or the phone goes, speculation will feel like a lousy crossword, or another excuse to sweat for a while. I feel your nausea. What do you - I'll take it from here - really think about drugs policy?

Do no harm. The doctors can't get over that one: it's in their unwritten contract. So does methadone do more harm than good? It keeps you junkies in check, and the public appeased. As I may have mentioned before, junkies have rights, too. They have a right, apparently, to be managed by the state as an alternative to imprisonment. We treat most other disabled people with more care.

When governments in London and Edinburgh can lay down their joints, they might apply minds to the idea of harm reduction. Prescribe heroin. Just do it. Get on with it, and get over prissy ideas that we might be indulging the drug-inclined. They are liable to be with us, always. The faster you ban stuff, the faster it will become a vogue. If your policy is to manage harm, actual harm, answer the addict's need.

Yes, I know. Got it first time I went around Westminster, and Holyrood. Mustn't "indulge". So what else is proposed for 21,000 Scots in deep pain? A less-good, minor opiate from a nurse with better, serious work waiting to be done? Dying in the hope of rational legalisation? Striving to raise a child while your world crumbles? Losing benefit if you forget the appointment for your state-sponsored addiction?

Just say no. Who wouldn't? What strikes me, as a historical footnote, is that a mere trifling 21,000 of our junkies have turned themselves in. Robbing a shop is preferable to methadone, in the scheme of things, as policy-makers may yet discover.