We demanded action on Covid – so where is the outcry over drug-related deaths?

Unlike with Covid where we collectively demanded political action, don’t expect any such surge in public or political outrage towards this year’s record rise in drug fatalities, writes Ian Hamilton

A sign at the Scottish Drugs Conference being held at the Scottish Events Campus (SEC) in Glasgow (PA)

Yet another record has been broken, not an Olympic one but a drug-related one. For the ninth consecutive year, poisonings due to drugs in England and Wales are at record levels. This year’s tally shows 4,561 dying as a result of using drugs such as heroin, cocaine or diazepam, a rise of 3.8 per cent on last year. Last week, Scotland also recorded a record rise in drug-related deaths.

We’ve become desensitised to reports of deaths with Covid wreaking havoc on so many individuals and their families. At its peak, we heard daily reports of hundreds of deaths due to the virus. This familiarity with premature mortality has the potential to overshadow the lives cut short by drug use, not least due to the blame that some will cast on those who have succumbed to drugs.

“They brought it on themselves”, or “it was their choice to use drugs” and other such misinformed and heartless views are still widely held.

Unlike with Covid, where we collectively demanded and expected political action, don’t expect any surge in public or political outrage about this year’s record rise in drug fatalities. This is a group of people with no advocates or political organisation. They are not drawn equally from all groups in society – they are overwhelmingly from the most deprived communities, although that doesn’t reduce the grief and pain felt by the families and friends they leave behind. What must really hurt is not just the lack of political action, but the calculated strategy of playing politics with the lives that are lost.

Instead of acknowledging the crisis ripping through our communities, politicians like the home secretary and prime minister want to bear down on “recreational users of drugs who think they can get away with it”. This is despite the prime minister and several of his cabinet colleagues admitting to “dabbling” themselves.

It’s difficult to manufacture a more grotesque and unfit response to dealing with record drug deaths by focussing on low level, occasional cannabis users. The thousands dying are not occasional dabblers in drugs; they are committed and dependent on drugs, not by accident but by social design.

The majority of people who become dependent on drugs and go on to die are using drugs with a purpose that has nothing to do with hedonism; they are trying to mitigate collective failure. They have often survived trauma and have very limited choices in how they deal with the psychological pain they experience day in, day out.

In that sense drugs work. They soothe – and quickly. Drugs don’t have waiting times or three-hour assessments; they are instant and readily available, unlike the specialist services that have been slashed to the bone following a decade of budget cuts.

There are parallels with the Covid virus. If you want to reduce harm, you invest, not just in resources, but in time and effort to reduce suffering and fatalities. The evidence has to be followed even when it’s not politically in tune with your parties’ principles or your personal beliefs.

If we can do this for a virus, we have the capability of applying the same principles to reducing drug-related deaths. We have the evidence already that we don’t need to wait for a vaccine to be developed. We could at a stroke ensure that specialist drug treatment is available to all those who need it.

The brutal truth is that not only do those who die of drug use not care about themselves, but we aren’t bothered either.