In the Times and headlining on BBC Scotland, of course, List MSP Annie Wells has called on the PM to hold a summit, when he gets back, on Scotland’s drug deaths.
Wells is known for opposing safe consumption rooms to reduce deaths, but these cannot be tried by the Scottish Government due to Westminster’s reserved control. Research evidence for their effectiveness is clear:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5685449/
The obvious thing for Wells to have done, would have been to join the SNP calls for the matter to be devolved but hard Unionism trumps death, it seems.
There is deep irony in asking the PM, the leader of a group of senior Tories who came out as former drug-users in an effort to seem cool in the campaign for leadership.
What illegal drugs have the Tory leadership contenders taken?
And, there is an even deeper, frankly sickening, irony in Tories try to make political gains from a disaster their own making. Scotland’s surge in drug deaths among ‘older’ users is primarily the consequence of the ‘Thatcherite’ neoliberal economic policies they introduced in the 1980s. See:
Thatcher government blamed for increase in Scottish drug deaths: Research carried out by Glasgow University and NHS Scotland found that, due to the high levels of unemployment in the early 1990s, drug related deaths among young people began to rise.
https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/11407/thatcher-government-blamed-increase-scottish-drug-deaths
Talking-up Scotland / Scottish media fact checking is like shooting fish in a barrel 
BoJo was quite correct when he described his cabinet as a crack team.
Given his statements about health administration in Scotland being returned to Westminster control,there is zero prospect of drug policy being devolved.
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Wasn’t it Joanna Cherry Q C who advocated the Scottish Government should just defy Westminster and open safe drug consumption rooms anyway? As far as I recall they gave Manchester permission, but not Scotland. Seems like a good suggestion to me. It’s about time we stuck two fingers up to the Tories, so why not now?
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For comparison: Drug deaths in England and Wales in 2018- latest release.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsrelatedtodrugpoisoninginenglandandwales/2018registrations
Note: as with many of these statistics they may be recorded slightly differently than in Scotland. However, what is clear from the report is that the trend is on an upward trajectory.
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There is a leadership campaign in the Scottish Tories, too ….. in case you had not noticed.
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