Scotland: Words mean little without action on drugs policy

Over the last few weeks, Scotland’s drug deaths crisis has been the focus of much media attention, starting with drug death figures for 2022 being published last month showing the lowest figures since 2017 and a 21 per cent drop from the previous year.

This however, also highlighted the scale of the problem.

With 1,051 deaths, this is still the highest in Europe and 2.7 times higher than in England and Wales.

However, this gap could shorten with most predicting another increase when deaths in England and Wales for 2022 are announced later this year.

Deaths have increased each year for over a decade south of the border, which again highlights the problem.

With unprecedented levels of people dying across the UK, this is not going away and the approaches currently in place must be changed.