By Professor John Robertson
The above graph is from Public Health Scotland today, at: https://www.publichealthscotland.scot/publications/drug-related-hospital-statistics/drug-related-hospital-statistics-scotland-2022-to-2023/
After a pilot phase ending in 2018, the Scottish Government began to embed Naloxone opioid overdose reversal kits across NHS Scotland. Shortly after, the kits which can be administered by anyone, were adopted by Police Scotland, ambulances and prisons, and made available to libraries, community centres, taxi drivers and to the friends and relatives of users.
Scotland was the first country in the world to introduce a national naloxone programme, empowering individuals, families, friends and communities to reverse an opiate overdose.
Anyone in Scotland can now order a free naloxone kit from national charity Scottish Families Affected by Alcohol & Drugs (SFAD) and be trained in its use.
Opioids such as those found in prescription painkillers are now responsible for 81% of all drug deaths in Scotland.
The above dramatic decline can only be attributed to this world-leading, but unknown in Scotland, initiative.
BBC Scotland? Humza and trans women, one wee girl’s surgery.
BBC Health? One end-of-life case, Martin Tyler: I nearly lost my voice forever. Who? Whit?
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Had the data for the most recent year phad the slightest uptick even within a downward trend, BBC Scotland and STV would be headlining that drug admissions RISE”. With an angry comment from DRoss and his tame drugs campaigner.
Alasdair Macdonald.
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While the downward trend is to be welcomed it is also worth mentioning that how drug deaths are recorded differs between Scotland and rUK. To some extent this was aligned in 2021 with rUK, however drug deaths there are regarded as an ‘underestimate’ of the true extent and nature. Drug deaths in rUK are determined by a Coroner based on death certificates info which in themselves are varied and limited. As we have seen given past experience of ‘discrepancies’ in the manner NHS England compile data it perhaps does lead to the inevitable conclusion that some distortion (intended or otherwise) is at play here.
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