Tag: drug deaths

 

Community pharmacists in Glasgow have used medicine that can reverse the effects of opioid overdoses more than 20 times since a programme to allow pharmacies to store kits to administer in an emergency began last year.

 

Naloxone is also being handed out to frontline workers, such as housing association staff, in a bid to tackle rising drug deaths.

 

In a presentation to the Pharmacy Management Celtic nations conference, members of the Scottish Drug Deaths Task Force gave an insight into the public health emergency being caused by easily available and cheap street drugs, making the case for community pharmacy to play a central role in intervening with people who are already using their services.

 

Dr Carole Hunter, Lead Pharmacist for Alcohol and Drug Services at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde – and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s representative on the Drug Death Task Force – says a key initiative has been to provide community pharmacies with naloxone kits:

 

“These are for the staff to use themselves in an emergency.

 

“You may think that that doesn’t happen, but in Glasgow alone, we have had 25 confirmed reports where the pharmacist and their staff have administered naloxone to people either within or in the close vicinity of the pharmacy, and I know that that is being replicated because we’ve had reports from Grampian to the Borders.”

 

The programme has already seen naloxone distributed to winter shelters and homeless hostels to drug users so they can support their peers, families and people when they leave prison.

 

Meanwhile, ambulance crews carry packs to give out following calls to non-fatal overdoses, and a pilot has begun in three pilot sites in Scotland to equip 700 frontline police officers with kits.

 

Last week two police officers administered Naloxone for the first time just two hours after being trained in its use.

 

“We were all ridiculously excited by the first effective safe textbook use by a police officer [last week],” Dr Hunter told the conference.

 

Dr Hunter cited research showing drug deaths in central Glasgow have all been in more deprived communities, pointing out there are usually more community pharmacies per head of the population in deprived areas than more affluent ones.

 

“Over the last year we have had unprecedented challenges. We’re in the covid situation, a public health emergency but, in Scotland, that came on top of the public health emergency of drug deaths. In Glasgow we also have an HIV outbreak as well.

 

“I think we don’t have to seek out people using drugs. This group of people are already there, they are attending the community pharmacy and the question each and every one of us has to ask is: are we making the most use of that opportunity to help to address what is a major public health issue in Scotland, the issue of drug-related deaths?”

 

Another speaker at the session, Chair of the Scottish Drug Deaths Task Force and Professor in Substance Use at the University of Stirling Catriona Matheson, points to post-mortem evidence showing the number of different drugs people had in their system being greater now than before, and growth in so-called “street” versions of prescribed drugs.

 

Professor Matheson described the situation as “grim”: “The benzodiazepines are not coming from prescribed benzodiazepines. In the past, it was the prescribed benzos that were leading the street market and now it is very much illicit benzodiazepines.

 

“The illicit benzodiazepines are so abundant and so cheap and of such poor quality.”

 

Dr Hunter says that market forces were at play and making things worse: “Drugs have never been so cheap or so freely available.

 

“They have always been around. In the late 80s, a tenner bag of heroin cost you a tenner. It still costs you a tenner today. And it actually weighs more than it did in the late 80s. So, even if it only kept pace with inflation, it should be at least £140.

 

“It’s the same for benzos. We’ve had temazepam which would have cost you £5 or £10 a tablet then – they cost pennies nowadays.

 

“You have to factor that into the whole equation.”

 

Professor Matheson said the continuing roll-out of the naloxone programme coupled with the other initiatives that have been set in motion, mean that drug use in Scotland should not be the death sentence that it once was:

 

“It has certainly been a very grim few years.

 

“With the work the Task Force is doing and now with government putting a lot of extra money and resource behind drug treatments and services, and care more generally, we hope that we will finally be able to make a change.”

 

by John Macgill

 

This story has been supplied through our partnership with our friends at healthandcare.scot. Click here to head over and have a look if you haven’t already.

 

 

 

 

A series of recommendations from MPs to address record drug deaths in Scotland have been rejected by the UK government.

 

In a November 2019 report Westminster’s Scottish Affairs Committee had called for major changes to drugs policy to tackle what it called a ‘public health emergency’.

 

MP Pete Wishart, who chairs the cross-party committee, said he was “surprised and disappointed” at the government’s “almost wholesale rejection” of the Committee’s findings.

 

“What is evident is there’s little change in the government’s drugs strategy despite the death rate in Scotland from problem drug use remaining stubbornly higher than any country in Europe,” he said.

 

“This fact itself should demonstrate that the current approach isn’t working. This is undoubtedly a public health emergency.”

 

An all-time high of 1,187 people in Scotland lost their lives to drugs in 2018.

 

The UK and Scottish governments continue to disagree over how to respond to this, including a row over a cross-UK summit to address drugs deaths held in Glasgow earlier this year.

 

Calls for change by the committee included the decriminalisation of drugs, moving from a criminal to a public health approach to misuse and, most controversially, introducing pilot safe drugs consumption spaces.

 

But in its official response to the inquiry, published today after delays due to the 2019 general election and the coronavirus pandemic, the UK government said it does ‘not accept that problem drug use is singularly a health issue’.

 

It went on to say there were too many legal difficulties to permit the establishment of a trial safe drugs consumption room in Scotland, despite a call from the committee.

 

Kit Malthouse MP, the UK government’s Minister for Crime and Policing, rejected a call to declare a public health emergency. He said:

 

‘We are already taking action to tackle problem drug use and our approach continues to be a balanced one which is anchored in: education to reduce demand; tough and intelligent enforcement to restrict supply; evidence-based treatment to aid recovery; and co-ordinated global action.

 

‘We are continuing to increase our efforts to choke off the supply of harmful drugs and relentlessly pursue the organised criminals behind this trade.

 

‘Tough enforcement is a fundamental part of our drug strategy and we are taking coordinated action to tackle illicit drug use alongside other criminal activity.’

 

Other recommendations to reform the ‘adversarial’ nature of the benefits system and major changes to the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act were similarly rejected.

 

However, Mr Malthouse said he agreed ‘in principle’ that it was important for both the UK and Scottish governments to work together across different agencies to address problem drug use.

 

Committee chair Pete Wishart said:

 

“The predecessor Committee’s report on problem drug use in Scotland followed one of the most extensive drugs inquiries in Scotland ever conducted.

 

“We argued that a public health approach will do better at tackling the drivers of problem drug use, as opposed to the stigmatisation offered by the current criminal justice approach that effectively blocks routes to recovery.

 

“On the proposal for safe consumption facilities, the government has repeatedly stressed that this is something that they do not favour.

 

“In their response to our report they re-iterated the legal challenges to a pilot being established even though we saw for ourselves how effective these facilities have been in saving lives in a number of countries round the world.

 

“The report of the previous Committee encouraged the government to do what is necessary to approve the proposed pilot scheme in Glasgow. This would give people using drugs greater exposure to the full range of services to help them recover. More lives could be saved.

 

“The government describes its approach to tackling the issue as ‘evidence-based’ but offers little evidence supporting it and fails to address why the evidence we collected should be discounted.”

 

This story has been supplied through our partnership with our friends at healthandcare.scot. Click here to head over and have a look if you haven’t already.