Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Rise in city’s alcohol deaths blamed on pandemic stress
Now in 2022 and the same raucous noise has enveloped a Commonwealth stadium and the crowds have celebrated another McColgan victory.
No wonder there were a few folk with grit in their eyes at the climax of the event. And, when Eilish and Liz stood together, it was beautiful to salute these toughs of the track.
Eilish ran faster than her mum had done for either of her Commonwealth golds and her time of 30 minutes 48.60 seconds is a new Games record.
“This is the most incredible moment of my career,” said Eilish. “I couldn’t hear myself think or breathe in that last 100m when the crowd carried me.”
ALCOHOL deaths in Dundee have reached their highest total in more than five years, prompting concerns the Covid pandemic left heavy drinkers more vulnerable.
Official figures show 46 people lost their lives in the city last year, the highest recorded since 2015.
Dundee has consistently had one of the worst records for drinking deaths over the five years, ranking fifth in Scotland between 2017 and 2021.
Nationwide, the figures from National Records of Scotland showed alcohol fatalities across the country were at their highest level in 13 years, reflected in a 5% increase in 2021.
Kathryn Baker, chief executive of the Tayside Council on Alcohol, warned some Dundee residents likely turned to drink as a “coping mechanism”.
She said: “The increase in alcoholrelated deaths does not come as any surprise.
“We do need to consider that within the context of the two years of stress and anxiety caused by the pandemic.”
She called alcohol the “go-to” drug for stress, anxiety, celebration and commiseration.
“It’s a coping mechanism and people have needed those coping mechanisms to deal with some of the challenges that they’ve faced,” she said.
Ms Baker claimed last month that progress in tackling alcohol was being overshadowed by a drugs crisis locally.
“In some ways we’ve been caught napping a bit,” she said. “The report shows us if you look at the health inequalities in relation to alcohol-related deaths, the gap was closing, albeit slowly, and what we’ve seen is that gap widening again.
“That’s really concerning. The costof-living crisis is absolutely going to contribute to that.”
Julie Ramsay, from National Records of Scotland, said health inequalities were 5.6 times as likely in the most deprived areas compared with least deprived.
Minimum unit pricing was introduced by the SNP in 2018 as a key policy aimed at reducing alcohol abuse.
A study published last month warned the measure was not stopping men in deprived areas from drinking too often.