Scotland drug deaths spike as rate remains highest in Europe

Opioids were implicated in more than one in five Scottish drug deaths last year, while the death rate in the country’s most deprived areas was 15 times that of the least deprived.MANCHESTER, England (CN) — Scotland recorded a sharp rise in drug-use deaths last year, with experts pointing to decades of deprivation, an aging population of long-term drug users and gaps in treatment as the crisis remains the worst reported in Europe.National Records of Scotland said Wednesday that 1,133 people died from drug use in 2025, up 11% from 2024. The rate was 21.4 deaths per 100,000 people — four times the rate recorded when the series began in 2000.NRS said Scotland had a higher rate of drug-induced deaths than the European countries reported by the European Union Drugs Agency.Using comparable figures, Scotland recorded 277 deaths per million in 2025, compared with 112 in Estonia, 75 in Norway and 69 in Finland in 2024. NRS cautioned that countries use different definitions and levels of toxicological testing.An aging populationThe average age of people who died rose from 32 in 2000 to 46 in 2025, with the highest death rates now among people aged 35 to 44 and 45 to 54.Catriona Matheson, a professor of substance use at the University of Stirling, said “Scotland has a group of people in their 40s who have been using drugs for a long time so their mental and physical health is poor.”Matheson, who also chaired Scotland’s Drug Deaths Taskforce — a government-appointed body set up to examine the causes of the crisis — added, “Some are quite distrusting of services because of treatment in the past.”She said children of people affected by drug use can also face disadvantage and adverse childhood experiences, including bereavement and parental substance use, creating an intergenerational problem.“I think other parts of the U.K. will probably catch up a bit with Scotland in time unfortunately,” she said.David Walsh, a senior lecturer in health inequalities at the University of Glasgow, linked the crisis to wider economic and social changes dating to the 1980s, when deindustrialization and rising poverty affected communities across Scotland.“There was a loss of work and hope,” Walsh said, adding that a cohort of people turned to drugs to “numb the pain.” He said that cohort has since aged, a trend reflected in Wednesday’s figures.Walsh also pointed to austerity policies introduced by the U.K. government after the 2008 financial crisis, saying cuts to public services and social security worsened existing problems.The rate of drug use deaths in 2025 was four times as high as in 2000. (National Records of Scotland)Socioeconomic divideThe drug-use death rate in the most deprived 20% of Scottish areas was 15 times higher than in the least deprived 20% in 2025.For deaths from all causes, the difference was about twofold.Kirsten Horsburgh, chief executive of the Scottish Drugs Forum, said the figures reflected an increasingly unpredictable drug supply but cautioned against treating drugs alone as the cause.She pointed to poverty, trauma, deprivation, housing insecurity and mental health inequality as factors shaping the risk of dying.“The truth is that these deaths are shaped by a much wider set of factors,” Horsburgh said.The supply itself is also changing.Opiates and opioids remained the drugs most often implicated, featuring in 881 deaths, or 78% of the total.Cocaine was implicated in 589 deaths, 52% of all drug-use deaths and a 23% increase from 2024.Nitazenes, a group of highly potent synthetic opioids, were implicated in 247 deaths, more than three times the number recorded the previous year.Matheson said the Scottish Government has taken steps to improve treatment but argued the response has been slow.“The problem was pretty bad before the Scottish Government really paid sufficient attention to it,” she said. “This means we have been fire-fighting for the last seven years.”She said drug-treatment services remained underfunded and understaffed, although investment in harm reduction had saved lives, particularly through wider access to the overdose-reversing drug naloxone.Westminster complicates Scotland’s responseScotland has its own devolved government and Parliament, with responsibility for areas including health and social care, but drug laws are set in the U.K. Parliament at Westminster.In 2020, the British government rejected all recommendations from a cross-party parliamentary committee to pilot safer drug consumption facilities in Scotland.Despite the deadlock, the country’s first and only drug consumption facility opened in Glasgow in January 2025, allowing people to use drugs under medical supervision.The Scottish Government has pledged to move faster.First Minister John Swinney, head of Scotland’s devolved government, promised earlier this month to tackle child poverty and treat drug use as a public health emergency.Courthouse News reporter James Francis Whitehead is based in England.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads