The Scottish government rejected a call by Parliament's own think-tank yesterday for Netherlands-style “shooting galleries” to be set up in an attempt to curb drug addiction.

The Scotland's Future Forum suggested that special consumption rooms should be established in which addicts could take drugs safely. It also wants the government to consider allowing heroin on prescription in extreme cases.

The forum made the heroin proposal after examining the success of a scheme in the Netherlands that helped chronic addicts who had not responded to other types of treatment.

The ideas are among radical proposals set out by the think-tank after 18 months of studying measures to combat drug and alcohol addiction from around the world. Frank Pignatelli, the report's chairman, admitted yesterday that he did not think that the public was ready to accept some of the plans but he called for a rational debate on the issues.

He said: “When everything else has failed, when no one knows how to solve this health problem, under very controlled conditions, we should possibly be thinking, 'Why not experiment, as other countries have done, with this controlled environment where there are health professionals on site?'”

Mr Pignatelli, a former director of education at Strathclyde Regional Council, claimed that the system helped to steer people away from a life of drugs and cut down on the level of public nuisance.

The report, Approaches to Alcohol and Drugs in Scotland, was presented at Holyrood yesterday. It suggests several bold options that it calls on the government to examine with a view to reducing the damage done by addiction by half by 2025.

The Scotland's Futures Forum also suggested that cannabis could be taxed and regulated and for tax from alcohol sales to be ringfenced for spending on those who abuse it. Tom Wood, the report's vice-chairman, said that the study was based on evidence of successful initiatives in other countries.

“Sometimes the evidence takes us to uncomfortable places - places that challenge our prejudices and challenge our morality,” he said, but added: “I think we have to visit some of these uncomfortable places and look at the evidence and look and see what actually works, rather than follow our hand-knitted ideas of what's right and what's wrong.”

The report comes a month after the Scottish government published its own drug strategy aimed at getting more addicts off drugs instead of maintaining them through the use of methadone.

Yesterday the government ruled out any any imminent move to set up drug consumption rooms. A spokesman said: “We are, however, taking the issue of drug-related deaths very seriously. For example, we are creating a drug-deaths database to help make interventions at a local level more effective.”

Making heroin available on prescription was currently being piloted in England and the Scottish government said that it would await the results of this pilot scheme before deciding what lessons could be learnt.

Scotland has the highest rate of drug deaths in Europe - 421 in 2006.

The report's findings were dismissed by the Scottish Conservative party.

Annabel Goldie, the party leader in Scotland, said yesterday that proposals for “shooting galleries” and cannabis legalisation were the ideas of the past two decades. She said: “The approach of the last Scottish Executive in dealing with drug abuse was deeply flawed. I'm afraid the recommendations we see today are siphoned from the same school of thought.”

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