Scottish drug deaths decrease, but they remain worse in Europe

Official figures indicate that Scotland is still the capital of drug death in Europe for the seventh year in a row, despite a 13 % decrease in deaths.

There was 1,017 The death of drug misuse in 2024Lower 155 of the previous year.

The national records in Scotland said that this last number was the lowest annual number since 2017. It brings the total in the contract to 10,884.

After adapting to age, there were 191 deaths of drug misuse per million people in Scotland in 2024.

According to the latest European data, the highest rate is Estonia with 135 deaths per million in 2023.

Scottish drug Minister Mary Todd said that the fall was welcomed, but there is still “work to be done.”

Experts say they are concerned about the possibility of increasing deaths again this year.

Kirsten Horsburg, CEO of the Scottish Medicines Forum, said that the arrival of deadly synthetic opiums known as Nitzins was a “crisis over a crisis.”

The death of a suspect early in 2025Really higher than it was last yearShe said.

This is a crisis with deep roots in the social and economic changes that swept Scotland in the last half of the twentieth century, as the country’s economy turned from manufacturing.

When the shipbuilding ponds, steel mills and choleirs were silent, they left a generation of men, whose pride and identity were associated with the things they made, and they struggle to adapt.

Society has also changed quickly. The slums were cleared in the old city, but many people were transferred to isolated tower blocks with insulation with limited amenities.

It was a recipe for the unemployed, the collapse of the family and addiction.

In 1972, in a famous speech at the University of Glasgow, union Jimmy Reed said that Britain’s “main social problem” can be summarized by one word – alienation.

He said that men view themselves as “victims of blind economic powers outside their control”, which leads to “a sense of despair and despair that people who feel justified are justified that they have no real opinion in shaping or determining their destinies.”

Red said that one of the ways I found an expression was “those who seek to escape permanently from the reality of society through intoxicants and drugs.”

Half a century after his speech, Scotland is still struggling with alienation and is still struggling with alcohol and drug scourge.

The high unemployment in the 1980s was followed by discounts in public spending after the financial collapse in 2007/8 and the cost of the high livelihood of this contract.

By 2024, people in Scotland were more deprived of 12 times more vulnerable to death than drug use than in the richest areas.

For many years, this was a particularly mentioned problem.

In the early first decade of the twentieth century, men were five times more likely than an overdose of women although this gap has since had narrowed twice.

The demand for drugs increased, as well as the supply. From 1980, heroin from Afghanistan and Iran I started reaching Scotland In large quantities, with deadly results.

Dirty needle sharing by injecting drug users and HIV arrival led to a general health crisis filmed in the 1993 IrinSpotting, and adapted to films.

This crisis has evolved in contracts that followed because it became more common in using medicine cocktails. In 2024, four of every five drug deaths included at least the substances.

Excessive drug doses are not the only evidence that Scotland suffers from isolation crisis. Other alleged deaths from despair are also high.

Scotland has a suicide rate higher than other parts of the United Kingdom and some The highest levels of alcohol -related deaths in Europe.

These are often associated with poverty. In 2023, the deaths caused by alcohol were 4.5 times higher in the most deprived areas of Scotland than the least deprived.

An athlete is a charitable and recovery faces that Scotland has a “tendency to forget”.

She says illegal drugs have become part of the national culture.

“It has become a normalization,” she said. “I don’t think we must accept this normal state.”

Of course, deprivation and despair are not unique in Scotland and they do not rise to a sufficient explanation for its crisis.

Various theories have been presented, including the presence of a muscle -muscle culture. Impalls, especially among men, to ask for mental health support; Even the long winter classes in the country.

Another suggestion is that the years of drug use are now heading with the Trainspotting generation of aging – although this is disputed.

Since 2000, the average age of the death of drug misuse increased from 32 to 45.

Another potential explanation is the effect of shock ripples.

When more than 1,000 people die every year in a small country, the effects of their families and friends are enormous and perhaps disastrous.

Drugs may be entire societies With misguidance of continuous materials from generation to generation.

“Everyone looking for treatment has been shocked somewhat shocked,” says Dr. Susanna Galia Singer, head of the Faculty of Addiction at the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland.

Last year, Public Health Scotland published a review of all drug deaths in 2020 Which revealed that 602 children lost the personality of the parents of the parents due to an overdose of that year alone.

“You get a social fragmentation when you have aspects of poverty and shock aspects,” said Dr. Galia Singer.

“You burn bridges with families, it’s very difficult. It is a society of fragments.”

The trauma may explain a high or increasing level of drug deaths, but it does not even explain enough an exciting leap in the numbers a decade ago.

There seem to be two main causes to rise in deaths at that point.

First, in 2015, the Scottish government Reducing financing for alcohol and drug partnershipsWhich is the coordinator of local addiction services throughout the country.

“We have seen a sharp increase in drug -related deaths,” said Kirsten Horsburg of the Scottish Medicines Forum.

“There is no doubt that the discounts in financing in this field reduce the quantities of services that people can access, reduce employees who are able to support people and lead to deaths.”

The ministers later strengthened resources as part of the “national mission” for a period of five years to address the state of drug emergency, only to finance to decrease in real terms in the past two years.

Ms. Horsburg said the 2015 discounts were a “disaster.” “Even with increasing resources as part of the national mission, we can see that they are still insufficient.

“We can only get two small pilots to address the state of general health emergency.

“We will not do this for any other public health emergency. We didn’t do it for Covid. We should not do this for the drug mortality crisis.”

The second big change came at the same time that drug services were cut.

The arrival of the Scottish streets was Dangerous Benzodiazepnes known as the street today.

These blue pills were a fake and powerful version of anti -anxious and valum drugs, and they were fatal.

Nicolas Surgion, who was the first minister of that time, later admitted that her government has taken “the attention of the ball” with the high deaths.

How to deal with the issue now remains controversial.

Many public health experts support the approach to reducing the damage that involves providing alternative medications such as metadon and clean needles and Drug consumption That was created in Glasgow.

“The reduction of damage should be the essence of any effective approach to the policy of evidence -based drugs,” said Ms. Horburg of the Scottish Medicines Forum.

It is among these Call to cancel all medicines Others argue with the transfer of relevant powers from Westminster to Holieroud.

Annemarie Ward of Faces and Voicees of Recovery UK agreed that reducing the damage should be part of the mixture, but said the balance needed to tilted the rehabilitation.

“When government ministers talk about treatment in Scotland, what they are talking about is to reduce harm,” she said.

“When the general public hears the word treatment, they think about getting rid of toxins, rehabilitation, and people who continue their lives.”

Mrs. Ward also wants to shift from providing NHS drug services in favor of providing the third sector for rehabilitation and recovery.

Charity invites her to such solutions, but she does not provide them directly and does not receive government funding.

“Our treatment system is delivered through the public sector, which means that it is incredibly bureaucratic. So you can not only walk the service and watch that day, for example, the way you can in England.”

Mrs. Horburg and Mrs. Ward may have different priorities to address the crisis, but both agree that it is certain that it is about to get worse.

“Nitaznes is a completely new ball game,” Mrs. Ward warns.

“These are artificial opium materials that are 100 times stronger than average heroin, and they end up in coke supply.”

The death of cocaine in Scotland reached a record level of 479 in 2023 and remained at the same level in 2024.

Nitzinate is not searched by users but is used by merchants for other medications.

They were involved in 76 deaths in 2024, three times in 2023.

But Mrs. Ward predicts a significant increase this year, “unless we start helping people get clean and sober again.”

If it is right, Scotland has not yet obtained this emergency despite the fall of this year.

The causes of the drug mortality crisis are multiple and complex.

But fear is that they produce a cumulative and compound effect from which to escape almost escape.