Prevention of Drug Deaths

Euan Stainbank Excerpts

Thursday 27th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Euan Stainbank (Falkirk) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), and I associate myself with the remarks from Scottish colleagues about Christina McKelvie.

Between 2010 and 2023, 333 people in Falkirk lost their lives to drug misuse. Our worst year was 2018, when 43 people died. Every one of those people was a family member—someone’s child or parent—tragically or prematurely taken. Part of the reason why that number is so high is that Scotland has the greatest number of drug deaths anywhere in Europe. I want to use my speech to talk about where we have gone wrong and what we have started to get right.

Although I acknowledge that it was only one tool in the arsenal of public health responses, medication-assisted treatment such as methadone has been shown to reduce overdose deaths significantly. The abandonment of Scotland’s 10-year drug strategy decades ago is a failure that should teach us the lesson of never returning to unscientific moralising drug policy. We should focus on real action and harm reduction. More recently, harm reduction policies such as naloxone distribution have saved lives by reversing opioid overdoses in Falkirk. The Falkirk Alcohol and Drug Partnership has taken incredible steps in encouraging the awareness and use of naloxone, and I pay tribute to its lead officer, Phil Heaton. We should go further on harm reduction.

Safer drug consumption facilities are proven to reduce overdose deaths in other countries. They have been piloted in Glasgow, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow West (Patricia Ferguson) explained. The sites provide medical supervision, sterile equipment and a gateway to treatment for those ready to take the next step towards recovery, instead of wrongly expecting people to go cold turkey, which does not work. Harm reduction saves lives.

Drug addiction is not a spontaneous phenomenon: it is deeply intertwined with social and economic conditions. People in Scotland’s most deprived areas are more than 15 times more likely to die from drug misuse than those in the wealthiest areas. We need a holistic approach that looks at root causes: poverty and deprivation.

When looking at drug deaths, we must also think about demographics. Many of those dying today in Scotland first became addicted in the 1980s and 1990s, during the economic shock of deindustrialisation, and are maligned with stigma and a lack of support. The average age of drug-misuse death has increased from 32 in 2000 to 45 today. Now in middle age, the health of that generation is failing fast, making them more vulnerable to fatal overdoses. We need to look at the demographic changes and where we are failing.

Addiction treatment, chronic disease management, financial support for the disabled and mental health services are all essential factors. I acknowledge that this is not an easy issue for Governments to tackle. It is wrapped in dozens of policy points and often involves those Governments find it the hardest to reach. Most of all, it is an issue of injustice, of lack of opportunities and of general social failure. We need to listen to our communities and take real action.