Boris Johnson urged to hold drug deaths crisis summit in Glasgow
● Tory MSP urges action from PM as SNP calls for drugs law devolution
Boris Johnson has been urged to make tackling Scotland’s record number of drugs deaths a priority by a Conservative MSP, as the SNP also renewed calls for the UK government to attend a drugs death summit in Glasgow.
Glasgow Tory MSP Annie Wells has written to the Prime Minister – the letter she says Nicola Sturgeon “should have written” rather than the one she sent asking for a Section 30 Order for a second independence referendum – asking him to rearrange a promised expert meeting as soon as possible.
The UK government announced in October it would host a summit in Glasgow before Christmas to discuss the issue, but it was postponed due to December’s snap general election.
Ms Wells called on both the UK and Scottish governments to place the issue at the top of their agendas and to put their political differences aside.
She said: “I lost a neighbour. Across Scotland we lost 1,187 people in 2018, and I heard from so many families who lost loved ones in 2019.
“So I’ve asked the Prime Minister to make the drug deaths crisis his top priority in Scotland.
“This year we should be focusedonsavinglivesinstead of getting caught up in politics and the usual constitutional blame game.”
Scotland’s drugs deaths have been described as a “health emergency”, with rates the worst in Europe while Dundee has recorded the highest rate of drug-related deaths per 1,000 population of all council areas in Scotland.
The Scottish Government said it planned to hold a summit on drug deaths at the start of 2020, and that it had “repeatedly” invited the UK government to attend but that, to date, they had refused.
Ms Sturgeon raised the issue of drugs deaths with Mr Johnson at their first meeting last year, and the Scottish Government has been urging ministers at Westminster to change the approach on drugs misuse from a judicial matter to one of public health.
SNP MPS have also pledged to issue fresh demands for powers over drugs laws to be devolved to Holyrood “if the UK government continues to refuse to act”.
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “We firmly believe the outdated Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 should be amended to allow us to implement a range of public health focused responses.
“We have called on the UK government to amend the act or to devolve those powers to
Scotland, and this must be part of any discussion we have.”
A Home Office spokeswoman said the number of drug deaths across the UK was “extremely concerning”, in particular the figures for Scotland. She said improving access to treatments such as Naloxone – used to treat overdoses of methadone, morphine and fentanyl – was key.”
She added: “We will continue to work with the Scottish Government to tackle drugmisuse and harm and sustain our support for programmes which reduce the healthrelated harms of drugs, such widening the availability of Naloxone to prevent overdose deaths.”