Channel 4 News tonight reminded me of something important, positive, about Scotland’s drug deaths – age.

Look at this – Age-specific mortality rates of drug use deaths by broad age group, registered in 2000 to 2025: https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/publications/drug-related-deaths-in-scotland-2025/

There were 21.4 drug use deaths per 100,000 people in 2025, after adjusting for age. However, when you have a think about the rate in each of the 5 age groups, you should be able to see signs of a tipping point coming when overal drug deaths plummet.

This drama all started more than 40 years ago, in the years after Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979 and her government began a massive and sudden restructuring of the UK economy, shutting down heavy industry and cutting the size of the welfare state in a matter of a few years, throwing millions out of work and reducing the effectiveness of public services for those same millions. In Scotland, poor decisions by Labour made things worse. For details of that, see: https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2026/09/23/how-scottish-labours-betrayal-of-glasgow-in-the-1980s-created-a-place-of-excess-child-death-that-even-20-years-of-scottish-government-success-in-reducing-child-poverty-cannot-remove/

So, the 55 and over group, teenagers and young adults in those days, deprived of hopes and meaning took to drugs 30 to 40 years ago. Many died from overdoses but many others have lived on with damaged bodies and shortened life expectancies. You can see in the line on the graph that they’re dying faster but that cannot last for long. In a few years the line will tip and they’ll all be gone, seemingly improving Scotland’s drug death figures and reputation of Scotland.

The under-25s and the 25 to 34s will not replace them with consistently low and plummeting rates of death evident in the graph.

The middle group, the 35 to 54s will be a presence for some time to come but they too show a steadily diminishing trend.

In England, currently, perhaps, 9.1 deaths per 100 000, 16.76 in the North East, 14 in Wales, the trend is very different:

Here’s a prediction. Death rates in England and Wales, though apparently much lower are steadily growing and will surpass the steadily falling Scottish figures in ten years or less.