The Scottish Government yesterday put recovery at the heart of its first drugs strategy since devolution.

Fergus Ewing, the community safety minister, unveiled a new drive to get addicts clean and pledged extra funding for treatment programmes.

His strategy was widely welcomed by drugs experts and campaigners, several of whom said it ended the "stale" arguments over whether services should focus on programmes of abstinence or methadone, the heroin substitute.

Mr Ewing told the Scottish Parliament his "guiding principle" would be that addicts can get better, and that the government should help them. He said: "In the past there has not been enough focus on achieving positive outcomes for people with drug problems.

"We must make this a priority for the future.

"For two decades Scotland has been in the grip of drugs - reacting and responding to the impact they have had on our people, our public services, and our economic potential.

"Too many souls are lost on a road to perdition. This strategy is about taking control of our lives again - as individuals and as a nation. A hard road. A long road. A road to recovery."

Later he added: "We are good at getting people into treatment. We are not so good at getting people off treatment, off methadone."

Scotland, according to figures from 2005, has around 52,000 problem drug users and around 22,000 people who rely on methadone to manage their addiction.

Mr Ewing and his government had been under pressure, not least from the Tories, to find more ways of helping heroin users make the step from methadone to full recovery.

MSPs will debate the strategy next week. Yesterday, however, it was welcomed by Annabel Goldie, the Conservatives' leader in Holyrood.

"After eight years at long last we have the signs of a new political will in Scotland," Ms Goldie said. "For far too long, harm reduction and methadone dependency has been the norm, but I hope that the statement marks a new beginning where abstinence and recovery are at the heart of the new strategy."

Labour were not quite so supportive - at least of Mr Ewing's announcement of £94m in funding for services over the next three years. That is not as much as promised in their manifesto, said Pauline McNeill, the party's Justice spokeswoman.

"They promised a 20% increase in funding and they can't explain why they have again come up short" she said. "Most worryingly there is no target of the number of people they want to get off drugs. The lack of a tangible target appears to indicate a complete lack of faith in the strategy from the start."

Mr Ewing acknowledged the input into the strategy of the old Scottish Executive, which included Ms McNeill's Labour and the Liberal Democrats. He pledged a fresh approach on drugs education, promising to send factsheets to every parent and grandparent in the country and vowed to step up efforts to seize cash from drug dealers and organised criminals to pay for social programmes. Focusing on recovery does not mean forgetting about education or law enforcement. "Prevention isn't just better than cure," Mr Ewing said. "It's cheaper."

Mr Ewing also stressed the damage drugs are doing to the children of addicts. One in 20 children are thought to have at least one parent who is addicted. Far from all have access to social work or other support services. Mr Ewing said addicted parents could have a "serious and damaging effect" on children and added: "It is crucial that we tackle the complex problems that are faced by children living in these households."

Drugs workers yesterday welcomed the strategy - as long as it was actually implemented, rather than allowed to gather dust.

David Liddell, director of the Scottish Drugs Forum, said the move recognised that medical help or jail terms on their own were not enough to help people overcome their drugs problems.

"This is a highly ambitious plan of action which will demand a variety of agencies to change the way they work.

"It is vital that they also have the energy, commitment and appropriate resources to see it through."

Harsh statistics ...