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Drug deaths in Scotland


gdevoy

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5 minutes ago, Bonbon19 said:

As I’ve stated Scotland is somewhat shackled but , cutting budgets to charities and other organisations isn’t the way to tackle the problem . That’s a Scottish govt decision . As is its decision to stop addicts housing benefit , whilst they undergo rehab therapy , leaving many who emerge from that gruelling treatment , with no place to live when they get out.

The drug issue as you’ll agree is a multi disciplinary problem not just a border control , legal, health or social care one .
Politics aside it’s a disgrace in this day and age that we , society , have allowed this to happen . I sat on an audit committee that looked into this issue in the 90S and it found local rather than National measures worked best . 
 

 

I agree that in a perfect world, cutting funding to charities and other organisations wouldn’t be the way to proceed, but this totally fails to take into consideration the real terms cut to the Scottish budget. Every penny is stretched beyond breaking. Every service is on its knees and it can be directly traced to an ideological compulsion to cut public services and spending  

Smoking - 9360 deaths.

Alcohol - 1020 deaths. 

Suicide - 833 deaths

Ischaemic heart disease- 6615 deaths

Drugs - 1339 deaths  

We both know the biggest factor in every single one of these issues is poverty. There is a stark contrast in health inequalities between the haves and have nots in each category. You don’t tackle poverty at local level  it needs joined up thinking at national level  on jobs, education, housing, welfare. That requires investment. Anything else is tinkering around the edges.   

 


 

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20 minutes ago, Wrangodog said:

Addicts have got to want to recover, some don't. Help the ones that need help to recover, keep the ones alive that are unwilling to kick the habit. Who needs the money most ? Mental health in young adults is also a huge problem and that can stem from or lead to drug addiction and suicide. 

You need to give them a reason to want to recover. A criminal record, no job, no house, no money, no hope aren’t exactly great motivationaL tools. Who could blame anyone for looking for an escape from that reality?

Edited by Zorro
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1 hour ago, skygod said:

I came on to see what was bein said and was disappointed to see that it was being discussed on the political board as that inevitable means that it will develop into the same old "Aye, it is", "Naw, it isnae".

That bar chart is horrifying. Only Estonia (and what is the reason for that?) comes close. Whatever the facts about reserved matters and so on, the laws are the same for the rest of the UK and there is still a huge gap. Some major European countries barely register.

I would say that it has to be No. 1 priority on the SG's agenda, its causes identified (if they aren't already) and solutions found.

I know it's not straightforward. It's complex and deep-rooted. I'm lucky because I've never been touched by the scourge of drug abuse but I'll do anything I can to support genuine efforts to eradicate this.

Can anybody recommend any charities and pressure groups?

 

As i said previously a local drug initiative charity or group ensures that the most money gets down to grass roots level . Ask your local council/social work department/doctor or your citizens advice bureau. 

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47 minutes ago, Zorro said:

You need to give them a reason to want to recover. A criminal record, no job, no house, no money, no hope aren’t exactly great motivationaL tools. Who could blame anyone for looking for an escape from that reality?

As somebody pointed out to me the career options for somebody with a conviction for canabis possession are limited to probably ...  er ... drug dealer. There has to be some mileage in decriminalisng personal use poession. Really dunno what the issue is here. I really want to avoid making this a Scottish independence ussue but I suspect the current Westminster government probably lack the intestinal fortitude to take on their own blue rinse brigade core vote on this issue.

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30 minutes ago, gdevoy said:

As somebody pointed out to me the career options for somebody with a conviction for canabis possession are limited to probably ...  er ... drug dealer. There has to be some mileage in decriminalisng personal use poession. Really dunno what the issue is here. I really want to avoid making this a Scottish independence ussue but I suspect the current Westminster government probably lack the intestinal fortitude to take on their own blue rinse brigade core vote on this issue.

https://transformdrugs.org/blog/drug-decriminalisation-in-portugal-setting-the-record-straight
 

This is what we should be doing. Westminster won’t allow it. Radical change requires radical action. That will never be achieved at local sticking plaster level. 

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15 minutes ago, Zorro said:

https://transformdrugs.org/blog/drug-decriminalisation-in-portugal-setting-the-record-straight
 

This is what we should be doing. Westminster won’t allow it. Radical change requires radical action. That will never be achieved at local sticking plaster level. 

That was my point earlier, We tried and WM said, 'No, this is a reserved matter and we will decide"

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35 minutes ago, Beaker71 said:

That was my point earlier, We tried and WM said, 'No, this is a reserved matter and we will decide"

I suspect, if faced with taking the decision themselves  the SNP might feel quite a but of pushback from their own supporters on this. You might be surprised by how many SNP members agree that anybody caught in possession of cannabis should be flogged and then some.

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8 hours ago, gdevoy said:

I suspect, if faced with taking the decision themselves  the SNP might feel quite a but of pushback from their own supporters on this. You might be surprised by how many SNP members agree that anybody caught in possession of cannabis should be flogged and then some.

Uou may also be right, but the stratehy of treating addiction ss an illness and not a crime has worked in Scotland in ither areas we do have the control over.

In fact PHE were studying how we have done this, uet WM ways No.  For them its the thrill of flexing their muscles and feeling billy big baws, than fixing issues and working to fix issues.

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13 hours ago, Zorro said:

You need to give them a reason to want to recover. A criminal record, no job, no house, no money, no hope aren’t exactly great motivationaL tools. Who could blame anyone for looking for an escape from that reality?

Totally agree. There is a bigger picture here conveniently set aside by some. Mibbe Brexit will bring a jobs boost and help deprived areas and give folk something to live for. Mibbe Boris will ensure a "levelling up" across all of the UK to help alleviate issues such as this. Yeah right.  

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42 minutes ago, Shropshire_killie said:

Totally agree. There is a bigger picture here conveniently set aside by some. Mibbe Brexit will bring a jobs boost and help deprived areas and give folk something to live for. Mibbe Boris will ensure a "levelling up" across all of the UK to help alleviate issues such as this. Yeah right.  

The most depressing thing here us that after 10 years of defunding local amenities like schools and colleges and closing libararies, jacking up the cost of education to the individual and encouraging sweat shop employment conditions the people most disadvantaged by the Tories (help your mates get filthy rich) govenment were queueing up in their thousands to re elect them. It is insanity.

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The nationalists falling over themselves to make excuses for their shameful record. Whatever the powers, the have no explanation as to why we are country mikes worse than any other country in the UK or Europe. It’s time they stood up for the Scottish people and put nation before party. Unfortunately, they seem to be mimicking the Trump Republicans instead. 
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By Kenny McAskill. Sturgeon doesn’t want any more powers. She doesn’t want responsibility. The Murrells want to make their 350k a year, jog off to a nice EU job before the next election and laugh at the gullible who lined their pockets. .

 

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5 minutes ago, gdevoy said:

The most depressing thing here us that after 10 years of defunding local amenities like schools and colleges and closing libararies, jacking up the cost of education to the individual and encouraging sweat shop employment conditions the people most disadvantaged by the Tories (help your mates get filthy rich) govenment were queueing up in their thousands to re elect them. It is insanity.

Same in Scotland. The nationalists have starved local authorities to shift the blame, despite having almost the most resouces in the UK. People keep voting for a party that can’t build a feel, can’t build a hospital, have ruined education, have the worst drug deaths in Europe, have an awful covid record, transfer money to the better off and govern by gimmick. Tartan tories. 

Edited by Mclean07
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2 minutes ago, Mclean07 said:

The nationalists falling over themselves to make excuses for their shameful record. Whatever the powers, the have no explanation as to why we are country mikes worse than any other country in the UK or Europe. It’s time they stood up for the Scottish people and put nation before party. Unfortunately, they seem to be mimicking the Trump Republicans instead. 
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F798088A-7FD2-4363-89F1-3A676BA83390.jpeg.bb604eff4c09bbb681e27f377fea2174.jpeg
 

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By Kenny McAskill. Sturgeon doesn’t want any more powers. She doesn’t want responsibility. The Murrells want to make their 350k a year, jog off to a nice EU job before the next election and laugh at the gullible who lined their pockets. .

 

I like Kenny but he is unlikely to say anything nice about NS, is he?

What do you think the SG is not doing to mitigate this embarassibg national statistic, that it should be and has the power to do now?

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3 minutes ago, gdevoy said:

I like Kenny but he is unlikely to say anything nice about NS, is he?

What do you think the SG is not doing to mitigate this embarassibg national statistic, that it should be and has the power to do now?

That’s their job, not mine. Maybe not just start taking action after 14 years, don’t cut drug abuse budgets and not quoting Sturgeon “take their eye off the ball”. That would do for starters. What’s so different here from the rest of the Uk? 

Edited by Mclean07
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4 minutes ago, Mclean07 said:

Same in Scotland. The nationalists have starved local authorities to shift the blame, despite having almost the most resouces in the UK. Tartan tories. 

I think you will find government funding is set nationally by Westminster. The SG had no autonomous power to borrow so its budgets are set in London.

We spend more per head because everything us more expensive in Scotland because of the remoteness and crap infrastructure. The Labour party had 50 odd years as the main party in Scotland and did hee haw. Now it's the SNP''s turn to do hee haw with the added dimension of blaming Westminster.

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2 minutes ago, Mclean07 said:

That’s their job, not mine. Maybe not just start taking action after 14 years, don’t cut drug abuse budgets and not quoting Sturgeon “take their eye off the ball”. That would do for starters. What’s so different here from the rest of the Uk? 

I asked that question first. All you are doing us batting it back. NS is not doing anything fundamentally different to Westminster in terms of cutting budgets so why are things so bad here?

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Throwing money at the problem hasn’t helped in the past.The deprived areas have had plenty thrown at them through the years .Still the same old deprived areas ever since I was a child.Successive Tory,Labour,SNP governments /councils haven’t made one bit of difference.The life expectancy of someone living in the North West of Killie will be at least 10 years less than someone living in the Gargiston/ Moorfield area.Whole family’s in Kilmarnock have a drug problem and it’s been the same family’s since I was a boy.Its a lifestyle thing and the only way to stop it is to take these people out of the surroundings 

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2 hours ago, Shropshire_killie said:

Totally agree. There is a bigger picture here conveniently set aside by some. Mibbe Brexit will bring a jobs boost and help deprived areas and give folk something to live for. Mibbe Boris will ensure a "levelling up" across all of the UK to help alleviate issues such as this. Yeah right.  

Tucked away at the bottom of the National Records Scotland piece on these new figures is this even more shameful fact - “At the beginning of the century, the rate of drug-related deaths in Scotland’s most deprived areas was 10 times that of our least deprived areas. By 2020 this gap had increased to 18 times as high.” 

Poverty, despair and hopelessness are the main drivers of drug addiction. For anyone who hasn’t read Poverty Safari by Darren McGarvey, get it and read it. It will open your eyes to why this issue is so much bigger than our resident British Nationalist wants you to believe. And why it can’t be addressed by tinkering. 
 

Edited by Zorro
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59 minutes ago, gdevoy said:

I asked that question first. All you are doing us batting it back. NS is not doing anything fundamentally different to Westminster in terms of cutting budgets so why are things so bad here?

You should also ask why in this instance he wants to compare us to other areas of the U.K., but in the many areas we outperform the U.K., he’s only interested in what happens here? Seems he’s less concerned with the fate of these poor addicts and more concerned with having a stick to beat the Scottish government with. This is reflected in his inability to give solutions to the problem. Either that or deep down he knows the solutions require Westminster’s consent. 

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6 minutes ago, Zorro said:

You should also ask why in this instance he wants to compare us to other areas of the U.K., but in the many areas we outperform the U.K., he’s only interested in what happens here? Seems he’s less concerned with the fate of these poor addicts and more concerned with having a stick to beat the Scottish government with. This is reflected in his inability to give solutions to the problem. Either that or deep down he knows the solutions require Westminster’s consent. 

I believe, although I would not want to put words in his mouth, he is frustrated by the fact the SNP have displaced Labour in Scotland without doing anything significantly different. The only real difference is they are selling a hope for a better future. Whether you think that hope is realistic or viable is where the debate is focused. MacLean, as do many others, sees it as a false hope being sold to further NS career. Whether the hope is false or not is much less certain for me. It might sound a bit metaphysical but I believe the outcome would depend on how many people believe and how strongly they believe it.

In any event neither of the major Westminster parties have anything to offer most of us. Unless you are a personal friend of a Tory MP or have some obscure social justice hobby horse you can sell to the Labour leadership. The Tories are selling the "brighter Brexit future" but that has zero traction in Gods Own Country.

 

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45 minutes ago, gdevoy said:

I believe, although I would not want to put words in his mouth, he is frustrated by the fact the SNP have displaced Labour in Scotland without doing anything significantly different. The only real difference is they are selling a hope for a better future. Whether you think that hope is realistic or viable is where the debate is focused. MacLean, as do many others, sees it as a false hope being sold to further NS career. Whether the hope is false or not is much less certain for me. It might sound a bit metaphysical but I believe the outcome would depend on how many people believe and how strongly they believe it.

In any event neither of the major Westminster parties have anything to offer most of us. Unless you are a personal friend of a Tory MP or have some obscure social justice hobby horse you can sell to the Labour leadership. The Tories are selling the "brighter Brexit future" but that has zero traction in Gods Own Country.

 

To coin a phrase once popular amongst Labourites, “things can only get better”. They certainly cant be much worse than this insular, blood & soil nationalistic, path Boris and his buddies are taking the country down. You’ll notice not a word of critique from Mr Better Together on any of that though. It’s probably just another example of where he’s reluctant to compare Scotland with other areas of the U.K. or maybe it’s just as likely to provoke a rant on the myth of Scottish exceptionalism. 

And while “frustrated” may be a diplomatic way to phrase things, bitter is probably more accurate. Trawling anti-independence blogs looking for a “new stick” to beat the SNP with, is neither objective or productive. Nobody is listening to him. I don’t think many people even still bother reading them. We just assume the punchline is #SNPBAD. 
 

He needs to get over the loss of Scotland. It was only the first of the Red heartlands to recognise “Labour isn’t working”, there have been many others since. And it’s because people have woken up to the fact that they’re only the party of opposition in name. The reality is that they’ve much more in common with the Tories than they do with traditional Labour. Even with every lever of power at their disposal, they did nothing to eradicate the economic disparity in this country. Dewar, McLeish, McConnell all had the ear of a Labour prime minister and as you pointed out didn’t achieve any more than the SNP have. 
 

As I have mentioned before poverty, despair and hopelessness are the root cause of drug addiction. @Killiepiesalso highlights it is a transgenerational trauma handed down from father to son, mother to daughter. This is what happens when you take away steady well paid jobs in mining, steel, manufacturing, rationalise whisky production etc and replace them with minimum wage jobs in call centres and zero hour contracts in the service industry. New town planning, the gentrification of some inner city areas while leaving others languishing in squalor, also gives people a visual daily reminder that this country is divided into the haves and have nots, winners and losers. In this situation hope may not be the panacea, but it’s a starting point. I don’t know about you but I’d rather look to a bright future on the horizon than down a well of despair. 

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interestingly, from BBC report, there’s a very specific and fairly new problem with ‘fake Valium’ that explains the increased number of deaths in last few years   Huge social problem irrespective of who’s in power. Only 1% of drug deaths were from long term abuse, but in 93% of deaths, a cocktail of different narcotics present.


Some 93% of the deaths reported in 2020 were as a result of accidental overdoses, while 4% were considered deliberate self-poisoning.

The figures showed 1% of deaths were as a result of long-term drug abuse, while 2% were undetermined.

More than one drug was found to be present in the body of 93% of those who died, suggesting that many of the deaths were caused by Scotland's "polydrug" habit - mixing dangerous street drugs with alcohol and prescription pills.

Opiates such as heroin and methadone were implicated in 1,192 deaths while benzodiazepines such as diazepam and etizolam were implicated in 974.

Gabapentin or pregabalin were present in the bodies of 502 people who died, and cocaine in 459.

There have been large increases in the numbers of deaths where "street" benzodiazepines, such as etizolam, were involved in recent years, from 58 in 2015 to 879 last year.

The fake Valium - that sells for as little as 50p - is many times stronger than prescription drugs, and is often taken alongside other drugs such as heroin.

(BBC)

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1 hour ago, Zorro said:

To coin a phrase once popular amongst Labourites, “things can only get better”. They certainly cant be much worse than this insular, blood & soil nationalistic, path Boris and his buddies are taking the country down. You’ll notice not a word of critique from Mr Better Together on any of that though. It’s probably just another example of where he’s reluctant to compare Scotland with other areas of the U.K. or maybe it’s just as likely to provoke a rant on the myth of Scottish exceptionalism. 

And while “frustrated” may be a diplomatic way to phrase things, bitter is probably more accurate. Trawling anti-independence blogs looking for a “new stick” to beat the SNP with, is neither objective or productive. Nobody is listening to him. I don’t think many people even still bother reading them. We just assume the punchline is #SNPBAD. 
 

He needs to get over the loss of Scotland. It was only the first of the Red heartlands to recognise “Labour isn’t working”, there have been many others since. And it’s because people have woken up to the fact that they’re only the party of opposition in name. The reality is that they’ve much more in common with the Tories than they do with traditional Labour. Even with every lever of power at their disposal, they did nothing to eradicate the economic disparity in this country. Dewar, McLeish, McConnell all had the ear of a Labour prime minister and as you pointed out didn’t achieve any more than the SNP have. 
 

As I have mentioned before poverty, despair and hopelessness are the root cause of drug addiction. @Killiepiesalso highlights it is a transgenerational trauma handed down from father to son, mother to daughter. This is what happens when you take away steady well paid jobs in mining, steel, manufacturing, rationalise whisky production etc and replace them with minimum wage jobs in call centres and zero hour contracts in the service industry. New town planning, the gentrification of some inner city areas while leaving others languishing in squalor, also gives people a visual daily reminder that this country is divided into the haves and have nots, winners and losers. In this situation hope may not be the panacea, but it’s a starting point. I don’t know about you but I’d rather look to a bright future on the horizon than down a well of despair. 

Holy smoke. Whit a post! Makes ye proud to be a Scot with that inspirational ending. 

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Is it true that drug deaths calculated in Scotland include all deaths ie suicide, poisoning, morphine, prescription drugs which doesn't happen in many other countries. People who have died of a heart attack or car crash are included if they have drugs in their system. Why not devolve Drugs policy in Scotland and be done with it. And I'm sure Westminster knocked back a plan from the SG not that long ago.

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