Middle-aged toll of record drugs deaths

a record number of drug users died last year as a rising toll was recorded among middle-aged addicts who formed their habits decades ago.

Of the 3,744 fatalities in england and Wales last year, nearly seven in ten were using illegal substances and the rest were on other drugs including prescription medicines, according to official figures.

it was the highest level since recording of these deaths began in 1993, when the overall toll was 2,178, including 831 illegal drug users. This means that while the numbers killed by legal drugs has fallen slightly since then, the toll among those using illicit substances has more than tripled.

The new figures from the Office for National statistics show that last year, for the first time, those in their 40s became the most likely age group to become victims, with death rates overtaking those for people in their 30s.

More than one in every 10,000 people aged between 40 and 49 – a total of 844 – died through taking illegal drugs last year, the ONs reported. This compared with 114 for the same age group in 1993.

The ONs said many drug users now in treatment for their habits ‘will have started using heroin in the epidemics of the 1980s and 1990s and are now over 40, having been using heroin for a significantly long period’.

it added: ‘The ageing cohort of heroin users often have a range of complex physical illnesses as a result of long-term drug use, which may make them particularly vulnerable to death from drug misuse.’

deaths caused by illegal drugs have also more than quadrupled among the over-50s.

Last year, 553 aged between 50 and 69 died from illegal drug abuse, compared with 98 in 1993. Overall, 69 per cent of those who died of drug poisoning last year – 2,593 people – were the victims of illicit substances, the report said.

synthetic ‘cannabinoid’ substances mimicking cannabis, including the ‘zombie’ drug spice, killed 27 last year, more than three times more than in 2015. The first death from spice was recorded in 2012. The ONs said deaths among men using illegal drugs rose ‘ sharply’ after 2012, and more slowly among women.

Between 2012 and last year the number of heroin deaths rose from 579 to 1,209, the ONs said. This was partly connected to an increase in supply of purer heroin to users.

Over the same period deaths from cocaine went up from 139 to 371, a record high. Fatalities are now running at more than 30 times the levels of 1993, when the drug was more expensive and less fashionable.

The ONs said: ‘The majority of cocaine-related deaths occur in men aged 30 to 49 years.’

it added that cocaine deaths included those caused by ‘crack’, a deadlier form of the drug usually associated with poverty and crime.

The rise in drug deaths among older people comes at a time when substance abuse is declining among young generations, alongside a fall in smoking and drinking. The decrease in drug taking among young people has been associated with the cleaner- living habits of the ‘Facebook generation’, and with widespread publicity given to mental health dangers associated with cannabis.

david raynes, of the National drug Prevention alliance, said: ‘We have seen the same pattern in the Netherlands, where the age of people who die from drug abuse has been rising.

‘This is the toll of people who began using drugs in the 80s and 90s, and of the failure to enforce the laws that could have prevented them from doing so. Fewer young people are now using drugs, so it may be that we are now having some success.’

‘Ageing cohort of heroin users’