The Scottish government is proposing to decriminalize possession of all drugs for personal use to combat one of Europe’s highest overdose death rates.

But that notion was almost instantly blocked by the Conservative U.K. government in London, which said it had “no plans” to soften drug laws.

On Friday, the semi-autonomous Edinburgh government said that “the war on drugs has failed.”, noting that the removal of criminal penalties for drug possession would “allow for the provision of safe, evidence-based harm reduction services.”

Scotland’s drug overdose death rate is three times the rate in the United Kingdom as a whole and the highest in Western Europe.

Last year there were over 1,000 drug-related deaths in Scotland, which has a population of 5.5 million