Nicola Sturgeon challenged to make Scotland world leader in drug policy dailyrecord.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from dailyrecord.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
SCOTLAND’S drug crisis took a further turn for the worse last week with news of a record-high number of deaths for the sixth consecutive year, reinforcing our position as the “sick man of Europe”. The latest figures, for 2019, revealed a 6% rise to 1264, the worst rate in Europe of drug deaths per capita and three and a half times higher than England and Wales. Scotland had 295 drug deaths per million of the population between 15 and 64 with the next highest Sweden at 81. That prompted First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to apologise “to every family who has suffered grief’” and to say that she would be driving forward the response after the next Scottish Drug Deaths Taskforce (SDDT) meeting on January 12.
Ekklesia | Political inaction on Scottish drug deaths shameful ekklesia.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from ekklesia.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
THE 1264 people who died a drug-related death in Scotland 2019 were “let down by their society,” one charity boss has claimed. Andrew Horne from We Are With You said the scale of the crisis was at odds with how the country presents itself, Horne said: “Scotland considers itself a proud, progressive and socially conscious country and I consider that to be true. But these figures are at odds with our identity.” While progress has been made in the last year, thanks in part to the rollout of opioid overdose reversal drug Naloxone, the statistics make clear there are problems with Scotland’s opioid substitution therapy programme.
KARYN McCluskey, chief executive of Community Justice Scotland, has had enough. “One thousand two hundred and sixty four. It’s the equivalent of a whole secondary school dying from drugs in a year in Scotland. Everyone. And then some more,” she said. “Drugs may have killed them – but you could also say they died because of hopelessness, trauma, neglect and missed opportunities,” she said. The latest figures - released today - show Scotland has a higher drug-related death rate than any other EU country, and three and a half times the rate of the UK as a whole. The data from the National Records of Scotland, revealed that 1264 people died in 2019 with causes linked to substances - a 6% increase on 2018.