Scotland’s grim drug-death crown

TOMORROW might be the day that Scotland is officially labelled the worst nation for drug deaths in the developed world.

There is no need for any drum roll prior to publication of the official statistics.

We will either creep ahead of the US or stay in second place, with a death rate 30 times that of many other European nations. The grim reality is the same.

The US suffered from the catastrophic abuse of opioid painkillers, which led to an explosion of heroin and lethal fentanyl.

God help us if such a cycle repeats on our already afflicted streets.

Scotland’s shame is that we have seen our numbers shoot upwards in successive years and utterly failed to reverse the pattern of deaths.

The “ageing cohort” of drug users that the SNP Government plainly believed was beyond help has not died off. The numbers have got worse and worse.

After 12 years at the helm, our SNP Government has now clearly woken up the extent of our crisis.

Public Health Minister Joe FitzPatrick’s thinking on drugs is clearly progressive and the Record accepts that he would like to take Scotland on a course that treats addicts as victims and steers more people into treatment.

But while we support his efforts to pressurise the UK Government into devolving drugs powers to Scotland, FitzPatrick must not put too much focus on the things he cannot do within the existing legal framework.

His challenge is to improve the failing services that are in place and break through the barrier that isolates so many drug addicts from the rest of society, blocking them from treatment.

The task is not easy but we must ask what it is that drives so many who take drugs like heroin to mix their fix with methadone, alcohol, prescription drugs and the deadly 50p blue pills that gangsters are churning out in millions.

If we can’t persuade people to stop taking drugs we must compel them to stop mixing them and to seek the treatment that can turn their lives around. Any overhaul will not be cheap.

The latest statistics must be the wake-up call that compels the Scottish Government to untie the purse strings and provide proper funding – far in excess of the extra £10million a year that was announced in the Record earlier this year.