GRIM STATISTICS WILL BE STURGEON’S LASTING LEGACY
POLITICAL legacies are difficult to predict – until they’re not. For the longest time, it is hard to say exactly what someone will be remembered for in five, ten or 30 years.
But every politician who has the honour of serving their country as leader, whether as Prime Minister or First Minister, eventually runs into an issue that will undeniably be their legacy. For Tony Blair, it was the Iraq War. For Jack McConnell, it was the smoking ban.
Nicola Sturgeon’s legacy has been up in the air for some time. It’s obvious what she wants her legacy to be – breaking up the country.
But only now has it become crystal clear what her true legacy will be – presiding over a drug death crisis that is Scotland’s national shame. Nicola Sturgeon will be remembered as the First Minister who forgot about some of Scotland’s most vulnerable.
The First Minister who abandoned our most deprived communities. The First Minister who took her eye off the ball – and it cost thousands of lives.
In the years to come, I believe Nicola Sturgeon’s only legacy will be standing by while our drug death rate became not only the worst in the United Kingdom by a mile, but the worst in all of Europe by some distance. When people discuss her record, the first thoughts that will come to mind are that her Government set a new record for drug deaths year after year.
Every time these statistics come out, we are sure that they can’t possibly get worse. But they have got more and more horrifying for seven straight years.
The latest statistics are jaw-dropping, and we must never forget that behind these numbers lie real people who have lost their lives, thousands of broken families and communities left scarred. Some 1,339 people died due to drugs in 2020. That is close to triple the number of deaths in 2007, when the SNP came to power. It has doubled since Nicola Sturgeon became First Minister.
Dig down into the statistics and it only gets more shameful.
The death rate among the most deprived Scots is 18 times the death rate of the most affluent. That gap has become wider and wider since 2007.
The crisis is hitting everywhere across Scotland. From 2007, the number of drug deaths has increased in every single council area. But there’s no doubt that some areas bear the brunt of the SNP’s inaction.
A tragic postcode lottery sees far more people in places like Glasgow and Inverclyde die than in my own
constituency of Moray. This crisis has reached such an overwhelming scale that it is time for drastic and decisive action.
That’s why we have put forward a Right to Recovery Bill proposal. Developed by frontline experts and campaigners, it will tackle the problem at source.
The SNP’s drug treatment system is broken. Our proposed Bill would cut through that system, bypassing the layers of bureaucracy that prevent funding reaching the frontline.
It would guarantee that everyone who needs treatment can get it. If that doesn’t sound controversial, it’s because it isn’t.
It should be the minimum we demand. People want to get better. When I meet people in recovery, they are desperate to get their lives back on track. They are often afraid of dying and becoming a tragic statistic themselves. But at the moment, they are being denied help. They are refused treatment. Access to rehabilitation is cut off.
How can we expect to solve the drug death crisis when people at death’s door who are crying out for help simply can’t get it?
Our Right to Recovery Bill is simple – it makes the right to treatment enforceable in law. It guarantees that people who want to get better can do so.
We will fight to get this Bill into law to save lives and to save Scotland’s international reputation as a place where we look out for each other.
Nicola Sturgeon’s legacy is set. But if we act now, we can still stop the drug deaths crisis from becoming a permanent scar.