Scotland's drug deaths crisis: New figures provide fitting epitaph for Nicola Sturgeon's time in office – Scotsman comment

As Nicola Sturgeon prepares to leave office, new figures on drug deaths provide a chilling reminder that perhaps her greatest failure in office is still having very real and utterly tragic consequences.

The first duty of any government is to protect the lives of its citizens but, on Sturgeon’s watch, the number of people dying as a result of drugs skyrocketed, hitting a peak of 1,339 in 2020 before failing slightly to 1,330 in 2021. In 2013, the year before she took over, the figure was 527; in 1996, it was 244. And the current high levels are a peculiarly Scottish problem. There were 245 drug deaths per million people in Scotland in 2020, compared to 33 in London and 67 for the whole UK.

A new report published by the Scottish Government, based on police officers' initial inquiries at the scene of death and not the official count, found there were 1,092 suspected drug deaths in 2022, down 16 per cent on the year before. The decline is welcome, but the total is still far too high. And a sharp increase in the last three months of the year is an extremely concerning sign that, despite being belatedly identified as a priority by the Scottish Government, this problem is proving to be difficult to address and, far from getting better, could actually be getting worse again.

Dr Susanna Galea-Singer, of the Royal College of Psychiatrists Scotland, described the figures as “heart-breaking as well as deeply worrying”, adding “the Scottish Government must do better. They must make sure services, workforce and funding is sustained over time."

If only Sturgeon had identified the issue earlier. We feel sure that she will share this same regret, after her candid admission in 2021 that her government had taken its “eye off the ball” as the death toll rose, year after year.

The First Minister is not a monster, but the figures still provide a fitting epitaph for the Sturgeon era, one in which a fixation on independence and the myth that this will somehow be a cure-all for Scotland’s ills distracted attention from what should have been treated as a pressing issue, and a salutary lesson about the dangers of politicians who prioritise their dreams over the at-times harsh reality of the lives of the people they serve.