From the National minutes ago but not yet released to ordinary folk like us at TuS:
According to the latest statistics, 1051 people died due to drug misuse last year. That’s a decrease of 279 when compared to 2021.
Drug deaths stalled in 2021 with 1 330 cases, 9 fewer than in 2020 and have now begun to fall dramatically with 21% fewer in 2022.
The surge in drug deaths from the mid 1990s (figures below) under the Conservatives and then New Labour, could have been reduced earlier had the Scottish Government also been able to introduce safe supervised injection spaces and to decriminalise drug use but the Conservative UK Government and its Scottish MPs and MSPs oppose both on ideological rather than scientific grounds.
The Scottish Government has two achievements which must be given at least some of the credit for this positive trend.
First it has maintained target-busting targets in treatment:
From Public Health Scotland in June 2023:
7,716 referrals to community-based services started treatment during the quarter. Overall, 92% involved a wait of three weeks or less. Nationally, the Standard was met for referrals to community-based services across all substances: problematic use of drugs (95%), co-dependency (93%) and alcohol (90%).
The target for drug and alcohol treatment has been met for five years, every quarter:
Second, it introduced the National Naxolone Programme in 2011/12 which is reported to be saving around 1 400 lives each year:
Naloxone kit supply may have saved almost 1,400 lives in 2020, report finds
These two achievements have had little to no media recognition.
So, one hand-tied, the Scottish Government has had to work within the constraints of the devolution settlement to do what it can to reverse a trend started in the Thatcher era, neglected in the New Labour era and then dumped on the SNP in government from 2007 without the authority to tackle it properly. The evidence is below.
Within five years of the Thatcher government’s ‘restructuring’ of Scotland’s economy, with sudden heavy industry shut-downs leading to mass unemployment, addiction, primarily in those communities where the young had few alternative prospects, began to soar. See these data from the National Records of Scotland:
These data show a doubling of addiction under the Conservatives, between 1992 and 1993, and a near ten-fold increase toward the end of the decade.
The Conservative Government response was further criminalising of drug abuse victims.
By 2002, after 5 years of New Labour rule, deaths had grown to 280 per year and by 2007, when the SNP inherited the problem, they almost doubled and reached 455:
The longer term effect had been the creation in the 1990s of a large number of now older drug users whose lives are inevitably shortened and which have come to the end in the last ten years.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
This is astonishingly bad news – for TheHerald , BBCScorchedland and various opposition MSPs .
Still , I am sure that the FALL in drug deaths will be overlooked and the NUMBER emphasised by those whose day job is to do-down-Scotland .
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Surprisingly, BBC Scotland, prior to the release of the most recent drugs deaths data published a long piece about drugs decriminalisation in Portugal. It was quite factual and not especially judgemental.
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It wont be long before Dame B will be seen on RS telling how bad the SNP are doing about drugs,is it only in Scotland where we get a break down of drug deaths all we hear is worst in Europe.
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It is criminal that Labour and Conservative and SDP politicians in Scotland try to prevent improvements in the treatment and assistance given to people with addictions, it is not that they try and offer other solutions , they have none and that is because they want people with addictions punished.
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