Scots drug deaths: ‘A tragedy of unimaginable proportions’

Drug-related deaths in Scotland are up twelve per cent and have topped 1,000 for the sixth year in a row.

National Records of Scotland (NRS) reported that 1,172 people died of drug misuse in 2023, a rise of 121 deaths on the previous year.

Drug-related deaths in Scotland have generally been increasing over the past two decades, and are now almost five times higher than when figures were first recorded in 1996.

Statistics

Highlighting key points from the data, the NRS said that “males were twice as likely to have a drug misuse death as females. Most of the increase in the past year was due to male deaths.”

It noted that opioids, such as heroin and methadone, were “implicated” in 80 per cent of all drug-related deaths.

The government department also observed that “people living in the most deprived areas of Scotland were more than 15 times as likely to die from drug misuse than in the least deprived areas”.

Nine out of ten drug misuse deaths were classified as “accidental poisonings”, with seven per cent classed as “intentional self-poisonings”.

‘Tragedy’

Scottish Health Secretary Neil Gray described the rising death toll as “hugely concerning” and pledged to continue to pursue the SNP’s “national mission” to address the problem, “including opening a safer drug consumption facility pilot”.

Responding to the data, Annemarie Ward of drugs charity FAVOR UK said Scotland was in the “midst of a tragedy of unimaginable proportions”.

Yet, she argued, “the Scottish Government persists with a strategy that has repeatedly failed to save lives”.

Shooting gallery

In 2023, Glasgow officials backed the introduction of £2.3 million pilot scheme for a so-called safe consumption facility, where addicts can inject themselves without fear of arrest.

Set to open in October, the Scottish Government endorsed ‘shooting gallery’ will be the first prosecution-free drug zone in the UK.

The Scottish Drugs Forum has already proposed that the Glasgow facility should be expanded to embrace the smoking of crack cocaine and heroin.