Are There No Edens? –
July 15, 2019 – Scotland’s biggest challenge is tackling the polydrug habits that see many long-term addicts mix heroin and methadone with alcohol, prescription pills and street drugs that are often manufactured by criminal gangs in makeshift Scottish drugs factories by the million. Campaigner Martin Powell, of Transform, which seeks to decriminalise drugs, said it is astonishing that Scotland’s death toll could overtake that of the US, given the way fentanyl has dramatically driven their numbers upwards.
He said: “The US is suffering a drug death crisis – driven by opioids including fentanyl – that has made headlines around the world, and caused political uproar for its severity. “And rightly so, as 70,000 drug deaths a year is a catastrophe. “It means that for every 100,000 Americans, 21.7 died from drugs in 2017. “That is the highest drug death rate in the developed world, where the numbers are counted, and possibly anywhere.
