It is yet another rise which highlights the emergency situation in Glasgow and across Scotland.
The latest figures for Scotland show the number of people who died in a drug related death in 2019 was 1264.
In Glasgow, the number of people who died in a drug related death in 2019 was 279, almost the same as the record year reported for 2018 which was 280.
In Scotland's biggest city 279 men and women lost their lives as a result of a drug death.
The year before, (2018) the figures were 1187 for Scotland and 280 for Glasgow.
It represents a 6% rise on Scotland on the 2018 figures.
That was a record year and gave Scotland the unwanted title of the drug death capital of Europe.
Drug related deaths have exploded in the 21st century.
In 2000 the figure was 292 across Scotland. By 2010 it was 485.
In Glasgow in 2000 it was 96 and by 2009 it had increased to 135, before a fall the following year.
A decade later and the latest available statistics, for 2019, released today show it has more than doubled in the last decade.
There has been an increase in recent years in the presence of benzodiazepines, particularly so called 'street valium' or 'blues' produced illegally by drug dealers and sold cheaply.
While services for decades focussed heavily on providing methadone as a substitute others with lived experience have been calling for more investment in residential rehab.
Annemarie Ward, Chief Executive of Faces and Voices of Recovery (Favor) a support organisation, which advocates for better treatment and rehab services, said there has been a "poverty of ambition" in services.
There are many opiate/opiod equivalency tables which will show you that the effect goes up by >200 % when IV vs. other ROA's.
Of course, the prices would drop through the floor if they were legalized and folks would go back to what they did when morphine and heroin were legal - they'd either snort them or gum them or whatever.
Notice how every 'government solution' A) Always requires more government, and B) never fixes what it's supposed to do, i.e., it ain't a solution, it's a continuation masked as a 'solution.'
Governments couldn't be doing the current lockdown / masks BS if the idiot masses hadn't acquiesced to the drug war. The claimed 'moral' high ground that 'we know what is best for you', began with the drug war.
R.C.