Drug abuse linked to Scotland's higher rate of deaths

Published on Tuesday 22 July 2008 22:06

DRUG abuse is to blame for much of Scotland's higher death rate compared with the rest of the UK, researchers said yesterday.

Mortality rates in Scotland have long been the highest is the UK, with the gap between the nations growing.

In 1981, mortality was 12 per cent higher in Scotland than in England and Wales.

By 2001, the figure was 15 per cent higher.

Researchers from Glasgow, writing online in the British Medical Journal, said more than half of the difference had been explained by higher rates of deprivation in Scotland.

But they added that about 32 per cent of excess mortality in Scotland was due to the bigger problem of drug abuse.

Previous studies have shown that 1.84 per cent of the Scottish population has a problem with drug abuse, compared with 0.99 per cent in England.

Professor Michael Bloor and colleagues from the Centre for Drug Misuse Research at Glasgow University estimated the impact of drug abuse on excess deaths using a study of drug users across Scotland.

They found there was a larger number of deaths linked to drug use that were not recorded as drug-related, for example suicides and infections, related to drug misuse.

Prof Bloor said that drug users were found to be 12 times more likely to die than someone from the general population.