Scottish drug deaths: what's gone wrong?

Scotland's drug deaths remain the highest in Europe despite repeated government pledges to tackle the issue, new figures have shown. Last year there was a 12% rise in the number of drug misuse-related deaths, which "dashes hopes" that a decrease the previous year meant "the problem was easing", said Iain Macwhirter in The Spectator . According to the figures published by the National Records of Scotland (NRS), deaths rose to 1,172 in 2023, a rate "2.

7 times the figure in England and Northern Ireland" and twice that of Wales, said The Telegraph . The NRS said that the most common contributors to misuse deaths were "opiates and opioids, including heroin, morphine and methadone", which were involved in 80% of fatalities. Separately, the Scottish Drugs Forum reported that Scotland had "not achieved the target 9% increase" in the number of people having treatment for drug addiction, said The Guardian .

Health Secretary Neil Gray said the Scottish government would step up its efforts to tackle the problem, but what it is currently doing "doesn’t appear to be working", said Macwhirter. Why is the problem so bad? Drug-related deaths in Scotland have been rapidly increasing since 2013 when the total deaths were less than half the number last year. In 2023 the number of deaths was more than four times higher than in 2000.

There is some basis to suggest that people who began using drugs in the 1980s and 1990s when "more young people started using hard drugs", are now the "likeliest to.