Drug rooms plea as we still top toll of tragedies in Europe

Units are condemned as 'state-sponsored habits'

- By Richard Elias

THE Scottish Government should immediately stop “state-sponsored drug-taking” as the country continues to have the worst death rate in Europe for substance abuse.

Latest figures show there were 1,017 fatalities here. Despite that horrifying figure, it actually equates to a 13% drop year-on-year.

According to the National Records of Scotland (NRS) drug deaths have fallen to their lowest levels in eight years with a drop in 2024 of 13% - or 155 deaths.

However, early figures for this year show the situation might now be worsening.

The highly controversial decision to open the UK’s first-ever legal “safe consumption room” for addicts, The Thistle in Glasgow’s East End, was the SNP’s masterplan to tackle the crisis.

Despite it only opening in January, it has led to countless complaints from locals over antisocial behaviour and drug paraphanalia being discarded randomly for children to pick up.

A second such site is expected to open in Edinburgh's Old Town next year.

Yesterday, the units were slammed by critics as offering “state-sponsored drug-taking”.

Nearly 11,000 people have died from drug misuse in Scotland in the last decade.

There were 191 drug misuse deaths per million people in 2024.

This was 3.6 times as high as compared to the year 2000.

Estonia, which had the second highest rate in Europe, recorded 135 per million in 2023.