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BATTLE AGAINST DRUGS STILL AN UPHILL STRUGGLE


According to a National Record of Scotland report, Scotland's drug-related death rate remains higher than all other EU countries and more than half of homeless deaths in 2019 were drug-related. Where to now for Scotland’s drugs problems?


T


he latest National Record of Scotland (NRS) report, which cites research from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs


and Drug Addiction, has shown that Scotland has the highest recorded drug death rate in Europe.


According to the report, Scotland had 295 drug deaths per million of the population aged between 15 and 64 in 2018. The next highest was Sweden at 81 and the UK at 76.


The vast majority of drug-related deaths in Scotland are of people who took more than one substance, so-called poly-drug use. Opiates such as heroin and methadone are implicated in the majority of deaths, but users are often taking a lethal cocktail of drugs which increasingly includes benzodiazepines such as etizolam - pills which are often dealt as ‘street valium’ or ‘street blues’.


Street benzos, which are sold for as little as 50p a pill, contributed to 814 deaths, of which 752 involved etizolam.


For years diazepam (valium) was the most common benzo and users often got hold of it through ‘diverted’ NHS prescriptions.


The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction highlighted the problem of benzos, saying: ‘In Scotland, criminal groups are known to be involved in the large-scale illicit manufacture and distribution of fake benzodiazepine medicines’. It said the pills were typically made to look like 10mg diazepam tablets, and known as 'street Valium", but these fakes often contained new or uncontrolled benzodiazepines which posed a ‘high risk of severe poisoning’.


Problematic drug use is highest in areas of deprivation, where people are not getting opportunities in education and employment.


Drug use is 17 times higher in Scotland's poorest areas compared to the wealthiest.


Dundee City Council area, for example, has the worst drug death rate in Scotland at an average of 0.36 per 1,000 of the population over the past five years. Dundee actually overtook Glasgow as having the worst death rate in Scotland in 2017, mainly because its drug problem has grown massively over the past decade.


42 scottishpharmacist.com


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