Drug deaths scandal: ten years of failure to listen

It showed the huge increase in the number of people who had been admitted to hospital for a drug related problem.

Every year since 2012 bar one, there was a significant increase in hospitalisations. It ran across all adult age groups and covered a number of drugs.

Over the same period the drug death toll was rising and rising and rising.

In any other, every other, area of policy had there been such a noticeable increase in the harm being caused it would have sparked urgent action long ago.

Behind the statistics are people. People whose condition was so serious it required hospital intervention.

Since 2013 the numbers have gone up, with more people being admitted for opioids, like heroin, for cocaine, and for hallucinogens.

In the same week we heard from Scottish Families Affected by Alcohol and Drugs (SFAAD).

Their survey found families waited an average of eight years to get support, and it was not always the right support.

READ MORE: Families long wait for drug help

People have been asking for rehab for years. Many have been told there are no places so eventually they stop asking.

Then they are told they are not suitable candidates, so they stop asking.

Then we are told there is no demand for rehab, that’s why there are no places.

How many of those admitted to hospital and who later died were denied rehab that could have saved their life. If they had money they would have got rehab privately.

For years now people have not been listened to by those who ultimately make the decisions that matter.

The decisions that matter all come down to how big a slice of the pie you are given when it comes to allocating budget resources.

Governments are faced with competing calls from different services for cash and they make decisions based on their priorities.

The portion offered to drug and alcohol services over the last decade has been reduced so much that it would not be recognisable as pie.

That means the people providing the services, who were praised yesterday by the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, have not been listened to either.

If they had been listened to, they would not have seen the resources available to tackle a problem that was spiralling out of control in front of our eyes, cut in the way they were.

People who are suffering from their own addiction and want help have not been listened to.

If they had, they would have been offered services that actively attempt to get them off the substance they are addicted to, not leave them dependent on another.

Their families, who have formed support groups to help one another, have not been listened to.

The conclusion reached by those people, those taking drugs, those dealing with those taking drugs and those close to those taking drugs is that they did not matter enough.

It is a conclusion that is hard to disagree with.

Instead, other people were listened to. Public health officials, academics who study patterns and data, were listened to.

The narrative of an ageing cohort was rehearsed as if this epidemic were an inevitability and it would all sort itself out in a few years time.

And all the while people were being admitted to hospital in their thousands every year. People were dying in their hundreds, eventually to reach a thousand and more and is rising still.

And all the while more people, at younger ages were replacing those who were dying, and then some.

Finally, the Government has been forced to sit up and take notice of the scandal that it has allowed to unfold.

It has been forced to do so by campaigners who have refused to go away.

There is now a recognition that the authorities did not do enough over those years.

It is not just that the decisions they took were wrong. They ignored the seriousness of the problem. How else explain cutting budgets for Alcohol and Drug Partnerships at a time when drug deaths are rising at a rate that is hard to ignore.

The £50m allocated for this year and £200m in the next few years has been largely welcomed by those working day in-day out in the field.

However, unless it is spent properly it will not have the effect it could and should have.

In the last year we have all become acutely aware of the importance of government advisors in helping ministers reach decisions.

If the First Minister and health ministers, of which she was one, have been acting on advice in how best to respond to a rising drug death emergency in the previous ten years, it can’t have been very good advice.

The thousands of families, in Glasgow and across Scotland who have lost sons, daughters, mother, fathers, sisters and brothers will tell them that.

So, the challenge for the First Minister, and the new minister responsible for drug policy, Angela Constance, is who are they going to listen to from now on?