Scotland drug deaths fall to lowest level in five years

Scotland recorded its lowest drug death figures in five years but the rate remains higher than in the rest of Europe, according to figures published Tuesday.

The National Records of Scotland said 1,051 people died due to drug misuse in 2022 — a decrease of 279 deaths over the previous year.

“While drug misuse deaths have been rising over the last two decades, with a particularly sharp increase after 2013, today’s statistics show the biggest year-on-year decrease since the series began”, said Julie Ramsay, the head of Demographic Statistics at National Records of Scotland.

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After controlling for age, there were 19.8 drug misuse deaths for every 100,000 people in Scotland in 2022, down from 25 in 2021.

In contrast, the mortality rate due to drug overdoses in the European Union in 2021 is estimated at 18.3 deaths per million people aged 15 to 64.

And the rate of “drug poisoning deaths” in Scotland in 2021 — the most recent year for which comparisons are available — was 2.7 times higher than the average for the UK as a whole.

Drug misuse deaths in Scotland are also still more common than they were two decades ago, with 3.7 times as many in 2022 than in 2000.

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Ramsay said those living in the most deprived areas were almost 16 times as likely to die from drug misuse compared to people living in the least deprived areas.

Men were twice as likely to die than women, while the average age of people who died from drug misuse increased from 32 in 2000 to 45 in 2022, she said.

The cities of Glasgow and Dundee had the highest rates of such deaths over the last five years.

Opiates and opioids, including heroin, morphine and methadone, were involved in more than eight out of 10 drug related deaths in 2022.

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Scotland’s drugs and alcohol policy minister Elena Whitham said the government would “never underestimate the scale of the challenge” it faced, including responding to new threats such as synthetic opioids and stimulant use.