1339. The number of drug-related deaths recorded in Scotland last year.

As you will know if you’ve seen me writing on this issue before, in 2016 my father was one of those numbers that you read about in the news. The numbers that are too often read out like a set of faceless statistics – so far removed from the individual personalities that were loved and cherished.

For those of us that have known one of the 10,663 people in Scotland who have passed away from drug-related deaths since the SNP came to power in 2007, the day that these figures are released is one we dread. We dread it because it seems like the situation is destined to get worse and worse each year that passes, and that those who are in a position to make change don’t want to listen.

The truth is that nothing about this crisis is predetermined. There is nothing unique about Scotland that should make our experience with drug deaths so strikingly different to the other nations of the United Kingdom, or indeed comparable European countries. And in recent times, it seems that Scotland’s political leadership has understood this.

At least by the words spoken by Nicola Sturgeon and her ministers, there seems to have been an acknowledgement that the approach they have taken thus far isn’t working. Campaigners have been telling them that for years as they slashed funding for rehabilitation services, leaving barely a dozen rehab beds in Glasgow to service more than 100,000 people with drug and alcohol issues. That is an obscene abdication of responsibility on behalf of those that control the funding of these services.

Unfortunately, behind the warm words there seems to have been little change thus far in the approach on the ground. The SNP spin-machine might be well used to the back and forth of constitutional grievance politics, but when lives are on the line, the empty rhetoric that attempts to deflect responsibility for this crisis is nothing short of immoral. When questioned by Sky News, the minister for drug policy – Angela Constance MSP – said that she “can’t speak about the past” on her party’s approach to this crisis. A party that has been in power in Scotland for almost 15 years.

The SNP might not want to speak about the past, but the friends and families of the 10,000 dead don’t have the luxury of forgetting their pain and loss. For us, those memories serve as a daily reminder of how they were so cruelly failed by a system that cannot hope to meet the needs of those desperately requiring our assistance.

The truth is, I don’t want to talk about the past either. It’s too painful. But I do want to use that pain to make a difference in the future. That is why I am imploring the Scottish Government to support the Scottish Conservatives’ Right to Recovery Bill which would enshrine a right to treatment, particularly rehab, in law. This is not a partisan point – we have worked hand-in-glove with campaigner Annemarie Ward, of drugs organisation Favor (Faces And Voices Of Recovery) Scotland, and a self-professed SNP member on this bill. Because we know that the issues affecting our drug treatment services transcend party politics, and when lives are on the line there is nothing that matters less.

If you agree with the simple principle that those who require drug and alcohol treatment should have a right to that treatment under the law, then please write to your local SNP elected representatives and ask them to support this bill. Ever-increasing drug deaths are not inevitable. We can make a change.