Rising jail drugs offences blamed on 'SNP's abject failure to tackle epidemic'

THE SNP government has been blasted for failing to get to grips with a drugs crisis within Scotland's prisons after new figures revealed a rising number of drug seizures behind bars.

- By David Walker Scottish Politics Reporter

Criminals are getting smarter at getting illicit substances into jails, using drones and drug-soaked envelopes and other methods.

Drones were used 65 times to fly drugs into prisons last year, when six inmates died from overdoses, while there have been dozens of hospitalisations reported in the last few months due to drug misuse as guards struggle to tackle widespread abuse of substances such as heroin, street valium and cocaine.

The Scottish Prison Service (SPS) confirmed in a freedom of information response the number of inmates who were caught with drugs had increased by nearly 53% in just two years - rising from 1,448 in 2022 to a high of 2,212, which was also up from 2023, when there were 2,188 incidents reported.

There has been 5,848 overall in the last three years.