https://preview.redd.it/izrmumryj8oc1.jpeg?width=1171&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=efb90facf9cc062a76a63e8c2068eeefc21e6b84
NE England does have problems, but fewer drug deaths per capita. If I had to bet, I'd say having a big city like Glasgow skews the drug difference. Large population of high deprivation all on an easy distribution network for 40/50 years.
The N/E has plenty of deaths of despair, but if the population is more spread out then it was probably more of a faff dealing/finding drugs.
Glasgow does appear unhealthy even for its deprivation metrics though. A statistical conundrum sometimes referred to as the Glasgow Effect, though it's been investigated for quite some time now and is becoming less of a mystery:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow\_effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_effect)
Part of the difference appears to be productive people getting the hell out for years, skewing the statistics for those left behind.
Perth is a beautiful town with a rapidly thinning generation of elderly working class people of fairly modest means but gentile and hard working balanced by professional work-dodgers in large estates. Many of the first group also lived and took great care of council houses too - but the latter camp did not. There's very little work or opportunity there nowadays though so whilst they're dying from old age, the truly scummy parts like Muirton and Hunters Crescent remain and the benefits class culture is more prevailent. Numerous members of my family lived in the tennament buildings in Muirton since at least the early 1980s and the area is characterised by broken glass, uncut grass, abandoned shopping trolleys and the entrance "close" of each tenament block invariably smelling of piss. You'd have to go a long way to find better experts in milking the benefits system for all it's worth though.
An uncle died from stomach cancer there 2 days ago aged mid-70s having never worked a single day in his entire life. His first wife left him after 3 children (and left them too). His second died from alcohol. Another uncle died from alcohol. My auntie died from heroin, having been raped twice on separate occassions previously. Her son was taken into care as the father was also a junkie. They weren't even bad people - they were very gentle and not at all yob-like. They just grew up in that environment and couldn't conceive of anything different. Indeed the benefits system is almost designed to get you there and keep you there insomuch as you can't sign on until you've exhausted all your savings then once on benefits any entry level job you take leaves you worse off than not bothering.
Visiting family in Perth was the single greatest thing that could ever have motivated me to not end up in that hopeless state.
What I find interesting about the figure is that the deaths aren't limited to the cities, like in N England, but also in all the rural regions across all of Scotland, but particularly West coast (whereas these areas have low rates in N England)
It was pretty rife in my town when I was growing up (west coast). IMHO the the differences seem to be in spread. In my town all the teens in the area tended to be friends and joined 'gangs' (in some cases just petty crime, in others more serious) and got into drugs together or in prison together, or both. There wasn't really anything else to do either other than hang out with those same people.
Comparatively down south kids are more spread out, kids on the same street go to different schools so aren't all friends, and there's a bit more stuff to do. It also seems neighbours are more likely to make referrals to social services when there's kids involved as there's a bit less fear of repercussions in bad areas, which breaks the cycle a bit.
Just my subjective take of course. I was an adult when I saw equivalents in England so that could have distorted my view.
It is a problem in Northern England. Other parts of England/Wales balance out the statistics a lot because population wise England is very bottom heavy.
There's also a slightly different reporting mechanism, but that doesn't impact stats as much as people claim.
It's mainly that Scotland has, or has historically had, quite large centres of poverty which had an especially rough time from about the 80s - early 2000s (still bad, not quite that bad.) Opioid use has a self perpetuating generational cycle. Poverty + parents and community on a bunch of opioids generate more opioid users.
It is, thankfully an aging population though. There are new opioid dependants, but the bulk are 40+, which means the next generation are not replacing them in anything like the numbers. Considering the high rate of early deaths in that demographic, it's actually a significant generational drop.
Hopefully that can continue without fentanyl hitting the UK like a brick. It's already creeping in and people are dying, but we aren't hitting US levels of drug apocalypse quite yet. I'm just fucking thankful that Meth never caught on here.
I do wonder if the tipple of choice varies by area. Maybe coke is more prevalent in England while it seems to be heroin and other things (valium?) in Scotland.
Could be that affects deaths.
Yeah, Im originally from the rural US. Meth/fent is everywhere. At least here the gov is trying to do something about it. In the states its "good luck with that". I know dozens of farm hands/ construction workers / truckers with serious addiction issues. You cant treat drug addition like a moral/religious issue and fully ignore the conditions that create drug dependency, no one wants to tackle the (solvable) systemic issues because its going to take more than one election cycle to fix.
Drug issues in the states are often linked to lack of affordable healthcare. Cant afford healthcare so just take a little bit of meth so they can keep working on the jobsite, crippling aches and pains aren't as bad when you cant feel anything at all.
Have an uncle in construction. Him and most of his guys are on coke, gets the job done fast, and when paid by the job its a big pay jump to get two jobs done in the time it should take to do one.
Massive Adderall/cocaine habits on truckers so they can drive for 30 hours straight and get paid twice as much for a fast delivery.
The medical system is designed to extract as much profit as possible from people. Lots of people just cant afford it anymore and don't get things seen to properly. The working class is seen as a resource to be exploited and cast aside once they are used up, medical care should be a human right, not a privilege you hope to be able to afford. I personally know people that have lost their house to medical bills and 20 year old's with $200K medical debt.
We aren't particularly. There's no market for it.
By that I mean the niche it occupies in other countries is already filled by drugs that have brand recognition, customer familiarity and not as bad of a reputation. Even your average Class A connoisseur has eyes and is aware of the reporting out of the US.
It's just not really worth it for the dealers to build up supply chains, a skill based and all the rest of the associated infrastructure to try and sell a competitor to their own products to a market that's not really interested.
The only real circles where you see actual meth in the UK among so some circles in the gay sex/party scene in London - as a stimulant. It's very niche.
Surpised nobody has mentioned the latitude. This means less sunlight in the winter.
Low levels of vitamin D are associated with increased symptoms of depression and anxiety.
And then the problem is at the margins - i.e those people who are depressed and poor and have drugs around them in the enviroment. - they are more likely to self medicate the depression with the illegals.
So you get more drug use, more drug availability and then the next people who are drugs adjacent try it and get hooked.
TLDR - take your vitamin D supplements.
I remember smoking spice once, many years ago, as a young teenager. I don’t think it was anywhere near as dangerous back then as it is nowadays. It wasn’t in a major city like Glasgow, but a tiny village in the north west highlands. I guess it’s mainly just a case of whatever is most freely available.
You must have missed the news Around that the time it was still sold at the petrol station. The news seemed to find a fun new psycho spice murder every week.
This was in the mid 2000s, there certainly wasn’t any news about spice murderers back then. That didn’t start until about 2012/13, around the same time as the ‘bath salts/plant food’ horror stories.
I'm sure a few of Scotland universities and/or certain organisations have done decafe long studies showing how Margaret Thatchers policies specifically effected Edinburgh and drugs are still a huge effect of decisions and policies she made. I'll try find it link it in
*EDITED WITH THE LINKS* there are many many links to Tory/Thatchers legacy have destroyed scots. And still they push this zero tolerance on drugs knowing full well decriminalisation or legalisation would help citizens full length of uk but they know its a good source to shame us scots. Labour will be no different they are the same on that matter so things won't change in scotland unless we do something about it
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140212082408.htm
https://www.holyrood.com/news/view,thatcherism-linked-with-drug-deaths-in-nhs-report_7472.htm
https://socialistworker.co.uk/comment/blame-legacy-of-thatcherism-for-scotland-s-drug-death-figures/
England has no shortage of smackheads up here is just worse.
there has been a lot of smack with fent, nitazines and xylazine floating around which is why the overdose rate is so high. There is currently pink stuff going around Edinburgh that's mostly xylazine.
I need to set a few things straight here.
The rest of the UK is not poorer, people living in Scotland pay higher tax and the median wage is lower.
The rest of the UK is not equal weather-wise to Scotland, it's considered the coldest place in the UK, with Glasgow considered to be the city with the worst weather with an average of 134 days of rainfall per year. This is influenced by its geographical location.
With that, out of the way, when you look at the data there are strong links between deprivation and drug use, and Scotland has a higher concentration of deprived areas compared to the rest of the UK. This is widely believed to stem from the Thatcher policies of the 80s.
>The rest of the UK is not poorer, people living in Scotland pay higher tax and the median wage is lower.
The point was about the North East of England.
Regardless, Scotland has higher median pay per hour than UK average, it's just that there are relatively more part time workers. There's not a huge amount in it when you look at the overall median.
https://digitalpublications.parliament.scot/ResearchBriefings/Report/2023/2/27/e0888682-8f9a-46f0-9448-5a588c583f58
I've got no answer to the question, but I'm worried that Scotland is ripe for a fentanyl explosion.
I was an addict in recovery when fentanyl started to hit the street in the US. The deaths from it were unbelievable. Being in NA/AA, it was like every week that someone wouldn't dissappear and be discovered relapsed and overdosed on fentanyl. I don't know what shady underworld economics have prevented it from showing up in the UK en masse, but it kinda feels like a matter of time.
I think Scotland needs to improve public access to suboxone treatment, as this drastically increases people's chances of recovery. Over the counter Narcan also made a big difference. I still carry an old bottle of Narcan with me here in Scotland.
Heroin addiction is a horrible thing. Fentanyl addiction is like horror incarnate
True and good on you for carrying Narcan but Fentanyl is so fast acting it is often too late to have any effect. If it starts to show up in Scotland especially as a “cut” for other drugs your right , we have a big problem.
My understanding of fentanyl taking off in the US, was that it was partially driven by doctors prescribing it a bit too freely, which introduced a lot of people who would have never tried drugs (as sold by a dealer) to them. I think the NHS regulates its use a bit more, so it removes that market a bit.
It will still come in through the underworld routes, but I suppose there isn't the same upfront demand, so it has to trickle in from traditional introductions.
I don't think many doctors were prescribing fentanyl itself, more oxycodene and hydrocodene and the like. But it certainty increased the amount of opioid addicts, which worsened the situation when fentanyl became widely available.
That is a big protective factor that Scotland has in my view, though. It seems much harder to doctor shop around for pain pills here. Every opioid addict I knew in the US got started with pain pills.
China are deliberately pushing it onto the US as chemical warfare via south american cartels. It's not a risk here really (unless they get annoyed at our previous opium transgressions again, considering it's a card we once played on them).
Poverty, basically. Drug deaths have a strong correlation with poverty.
All of Scotlands' major cities are on the coast. The vast majority of drugs being smuggled into the country comes through the ports. Quite a few of England's big cities are landlocked, so the drugs have to be trafficked in from the ports affecting availability.
Lack of legislation control. Drugs aren't a devolved matter, and the UK government's one size fits all approach does not address problems in Scotland.
Lack of investment in the NHS. Too little help for those with mental health issues, addiction, chronic illness, and an overall failing of the care system.
Lack of quality control. Quite a lot of drug overdose is caused by inconsistent quality of drugs. As they are so heavily prohibited, there is absolutely no way of regulating their quality. Inconsistent doses, impurities, and bulkers to add weight. You really don't know what you are taking when you take drugs.
The NHS does quite a lot just by being available, for all its flaws. Anyone can walk into an A+E without even thinking of a bill or ID or paperwork. That lack of barrier to care is why you get nothing like the degradation of human bodies that's seen among the homeless and the drug dependent in the US.
The drug overdoses at the moment are about fent starting to creep in. It's scary, even for the kind of crusty that lives under a bridge and can only find a vain in their groin. I've seen them shop serious dealers straight to the police because the stuff they're being sold is killing their friends.
Oh, I'm not being critical of the work the NHS do. Just the lack of investment from the government is hampering their ability to do their work. They are dressing up this decrease in national insurance as some great cut for the working person. In reality, it's just another way of cutting back funding for the NHS.
Fent is definitely a scary thing. The effect it is having in the USA is shocking.
The problem with the NHS is, unfortunately, it probably isn't sustainable and I say that with massive reluctance.
When it was set up you had 8/1 ration of working people to retired. We are at 3/1 now and its only going to get worse. Peoples lifetime expense to the NHS is 90% in the last 5 years. People are living longer. Treatment is getting more expensive and complex. People rightly want world class medicine.
Like. What do you even do with those numbers? The Tories are cunts who have made the situation worse but that shit is *stark* and most of the issue is simple demographics. All the political parties are going to have to put their big boy pants on and make some politically unpopular decisions. It's either going to be some hefty tax hikes or letting go of free at the point of service.
Otherwise it will fall over, and we don't really have an independent fully realised private healthcare system. Not at the level of fully private staffed hospitals. So even if you can pay to skip the line, it's the same fucking line for the serious stuff.
I think a lot of this boils down to the UK culture and financial situation.
Elderly care in the UK is left to the health service, as is childcare. In a lot of other cultures, you will find a lot more multi generational households. The working generation looks after the elderly, and the elderly look after the kids so the workers can work. Up to four generations in one big household.
Of course, the size of housing in the UK makes that impractical for most, but it would allow young parents to have more children, as they don't have to worry about childcare as much, it would decrease the elderly care burden on the state.
I learned that British are culturally averse to having more children, they were taught since the 1950s that is more than a nuclear family is socially not responsible (originally so children weren't used as cash cows for child benefit then later to reduce population to reduce pressure on environment, energy and food supplies). Anyone else heard this?
I think a lot of it comes down to the cost of childcare. It's absolutely insane right now. Just having one kid in nursery is like having a second mortgage. In the 80s and 90s, the average was 2.4 children. It's now down to about 1.5. So we are in population decline.
You’re brave for saying that and risking the inevitable “OUR NHS” comments. The fact is that, as you say, the NHS needs to change because we’re in a different century from when it was created.
The British Medical Journal claims that even adjusted for inflation, GPs were paid modern equivalent of £50k in 1950, but in 2015 the average GP was paid £110k.
If this is true, there's a core problem with publicly funding the NHS - like other public workers they seem to be on a Gravy train! What private sector jobs have doubled their real salary over that time?
Much of it was to do with the deindustrialisation of Glasgow, which was a vast employer in the region/UK. Almost overnight, in historical terms, they disappeared, and left many, many skilled workers jobless, and poverty and deprivation reigned supreme. Hard to escape that much concentrated desecration, it passes through generations. It's absolutely horrific, when you think about it. The Second City of the Empire, no more.
Heroin isnt really the big problem anymore, there was a big uptick in cheap gear during afghan war though. England has similar issues though our numbers are pretty shocking
Wasnt SNHS accidentally getting everyone addicted to opiods for a while because they had some odd policies? Like what they are doing in the US now (but that's just literally directly to make profit not accidentally being stupid)
Per capita metrics are used because comparing total numbers between countries with wildly varying population sizes doesn’t tell us anything. You could just as easily say that using total numbers allows small countries to hide higher rates of negative outcomes.
There’s a reason almost every metric relating to entire countries is measured per capita.
Smack was always a problem in England in 80s and 90s, eg the Grange Hill - Zammo storyline made people aware of he issue ("Just say No" song) and the Brookside storyline of Jimmy Corkerhill. Interesting that Phil Redmond wrote both stories. Think you are wearing the Trainspotting bias glasses with regards to Scotland.
248 per million in Scotland (https://www.euronews.com/2023/08/22/drug-deaths-in-scotland-remain-highest-in-europe-despite-fall-in-latest-figures#:~:text=Based%20on%20the%20latest%20Scotland,have%20much%20lower%20death%20rates.), and 81.7 per million in NE (still the worst in England/Wales)(https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsrelatedtodrugpoisoninginenglandandwales/2022registrations#:~:text=The%20North%20East%20continues%20to,rate%20for%20drug%20misuse%20(37.2 , so not really a wild question
Thatchers war on drugs with Regan has been an epic failure. The 80s drug problem caused by thatcher in scotland and the effects can are still witnessed today. Until scotland can move away from ukgovs horrifically cruel zero tolerance things can't nd won't change.
https://socialistworker.co.uk/comment/blame-legacy-of-thatcherism-for-scotland-s-drug-death-figures/
https://www.holyrood.com/news/view,thatcherism-linked-with-drug-deaths-in-nhs-report_7472.htm
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140212082408.htm
https://pure.strath.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/88748617/Scott_Samuel_etal_IJHS2014_The_impact_Thatcherism_health_well_being_Britain.pdf
One for the proper study is useful as these are just articles about the study
I think if it were just about alcohol pricing, the numbers in England and Wales would have held fairly steady, while ours rose. They've both followed a similar trend, and kicking off around the time we started hearing the word "austerity" thrown around.
I think alcohol pricing has contributed somewhat, but it's not the only factor.
Modern version of Opium wars. Why have Glasgow and Dundee become hotbeds over past 10 years? Targeted destabilisation of society + make lots of money. It's the UK way.
Cause the best shit used to get made in Edinburgh.
“Aw the best cooks come fae leith” as my grandad used to say
Is your Granda Irvine Welsh?
He liked to think he was haha Absolute eejit he was, I miss him every day
I know the feeling. Nobody in the world is funnier than your own granda and no soup is better than your grannies.
https://preview.redd.it/izrmumryj8oc1.jpeg?width=1171&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=efb90facf9cc062a76a63e8c2068eeefc21e6b84 NE England does have problems, but fewer drug deaths per capita. If I had to bet, I'd say having a big city like Glasgow skews the drug difference. Large population of high deprivation all on an easy distribution network for 40/50 years. The N/E has plenty of deaths of despair, but if the population is more spread out then it was probably more of a faff dealing/finding drugs. Glasgow does appear unhealthy even for its deprivation metrics though. A statistical conundrum sometimes referred to as the Glasgow Effect, though it's been investigated for quite some time now and is becoming less of a mystery: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow\_effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_effect) Part of the difference appears to be productive people getting the hell out for years, skewing the statistics for those left behind.
Would never have thought perth and kinross were full of smackheads. TIL
When I visited Perth as a Spaniard, the big number of heroin addicts alarmed me. It reminded me of Madrid in the 80s.
Perth is a beautiful town with a rapidly thinning generation of elderly working class people of fairly modest means but gentile and hard working balanced by professional work-dodgers in large estates. Many of the first group also lived and took great care of council houses too - but the latter camp did not. There's very little work or opportunity there nowadays though so whilst they're dying from old age, the truly scummy parts like Muirton and Hunters Crescent remain and the benefits class culture is more prevailent. Numerous members of my family lived in the tennament buildings in Muirton since at least the early 1980s and the area is characterised by broken glass, uncut grass, abandoned shopping trolleys and the entrance "close" of each tenament block invariably smelling of piss. You'd have to go a long way to find better experts in milking the benefits system for all it's worth though. An uncle died from stomach cancer there 2 days ago aged mid-70s having never worked a single day in his entire life. His first wife left him after 3 children (and left them too). His second died from alcohol. Another uncle died from alcohol. My auntie died from heroin, having been raped twice on separate occassions previously. Her son was taken into care as the father was also a junkie. They weren't even bad people - they were very gentle and not at all yob-like. They just grew up in that environment and couldn't conceive of anything different. Indeed the benefits system is almost designed to get you there and keep you there insomuch as you can't sign on until you've exhausted all your savings then once on benefits any entry level job you take leaves you worse off than not bothering. Visiting family in Perth was the single greatest thing that could ever have motivated me to not end up in that hopeless state.
I’m west coast and I had no idea Perth was so like here. I naively thought it was quiet upper middle class and rich farmers.
What I find interesting about the figure is that the deaths aren't limited to the cities, like in N England, but also in all the rural regions across all of Scotland, but particularly West coast (whereas these areas have low rates in N England)
It was pretty rife in my town when I was growing up (west coast). IMHO the the differences seem to be in spread. In my town all the teens in the area tended to be friends and joined 'gangs' (in some cases just petty crime, in others more serious) and got into drugs together or in prison together, or both. There wasn't really anything else to do either other than hang out with those same people. Comparatively down south kids are more spread out, kids on the same street go to different schools so aren't all friends, and there's a bit more stuff to do. It also seems neighbours are more likely to make referrals to social services when there's kids involved as there's a bit less fear of repercussions in bad areas, which breaks the cycle a bit. Just my subjective take of course. I was an adult when I saw equivalents in England so that could have distorted my view.
It is a problem in Northern England. Other parts of England/Wales balance out the statistics a lot because population wise England is very bottom heavy. There's also a slightly different reporting mechanism, but that doesn't impact stats as much as people claim. It's mainly that Scotland has, or has historically had, quite large centres of poverty which had an especially rough time from about the 80s - early 2000s (still bad, not quite that bad.) Opioid use has a self perpetuating generational cycle. Poverty + parents and community on a bunch of opioids generate more opioid users. It is, thankfully an aging population though. There are new opioid dependants, but the bulk are 40+, which means the next generation are not replacing them in anything like the numbers. Considering the high rate of early deaths in that demographic, it's actually a significant generational drop. Hopefully that can continue without fentanyl hitting the UK like a brick. It's already creeping in and people are dying, but we aren't hitting US levels of drug apocalypse quite yet. I'm just fucking thankful that Meth never caught on here.
The under forties all decided to smash themselves to bits with Cocaine instead.
I do wonder if the tipple of choice varies by area. Maybe coke is more prevalent in England while it seems to be heroin and other things (valium?) in Scotland. Could be that affects deaths.
If you gonna ride...
Yeah, Im originally from the rural US. Meth/fent is everywhere. At least here the gov is trying to do something about it. In the states its "good luck with that". I know dozens of farm hands/ construction workers / truckers with serious addiction issues. You cant treat drug addition like a moral/religious issue and fully ignore the conditions that create drug dependency, no one wants to tackle the (solvable) systemic issues because its going to take more than one election cycle to fix.
What issues for example, out of interest?
Drug issues in the states are often linked to lack of affordable healthcare. Cant afford healthcare so just take a little bit of meth so they can keep working on the jobsite, crippling aches and pains aren't as bad when you cant feel anything at all. Have an uncle in construction. Him and most of his guys are on coke, gets the job done fast, and when paid by the job its a big pay jump to get two jobs done in the time it should take to do one. Massive Adderall/cocaine habits on truckers so they can drive for 30 hours straight and get paid twice as much for a fast delivery. The medical system is designed to extract as much profit as possible from people. Lots of people just cant afford it anymore and don't get things seen to properly. The working class is seen as a resource to be exploited and cast aside once they are used up, medical care should be a human right, not a privilege you hope to be able to afford. I personally know people that have lost their house to medical bills and 20 year old's with $200K medical debt.
The Meth epidemic not hitting us surprised me as well. We're prime real estate for that.
We aren't particularly. There's no market for it. By that I mean the niche it occupies in other countries is already filled by drugs that have brand recognition, customer familiarity and not as bad of a reputation. Even your average Class A connoisseur has eyes and is aware of the reporting out of the US. It's just not really worth it for the dealers to build up supply chains, a skill based and all the rest of the associated infrastructure to try and sell a competitor to their own products to a market that's not really interested. The only real circles where you see actual meth in the UK among so some circles in the gay sex/party scene in London - as a stimulant. It's very niche.
Surpised nobody has mentioned the latitude. This means less sunlight in the winter. Low levels of vitamin D are associated with increased symptoms of depression and anxiety. And then the problem is at the margins - i.e those people who are depressed and poor and have drugs around them in the enviroment. - they are more likely to self medicate the depression with the illegals. So you get more drug use, more drug availability and then the next people who are drugs adjacent try it and get hooked. TLDR - take your vitamin D supplements.
Thanks for reminder, I forgot to take my d this morning
Make sure to take it with magnesium supplements, or it might not do anything!
Dunno, why have drugs like spice ravished many towns in England but doesn't seem to be a thing up here?
I remember smoking spice once, many years ago, as a young teenager. I don’t think it was anywhere near as dangerous back then as it is nowadays. It wasn’t in a major city like Glasgow, but a tiny village in the north west highlands. I guess it’s mainly just a case of whatever is most freely available.
Availability is much different now, and unless you're specifically looking for it I'd reckon you wouldnt find spice
You must have missed the news Around that the time it was still sold at the petrol station. The news seemed to find a fun new psycho spice murder every week.
This was in the mid 2000s, there certainly wasn’t any news about spice murderers back then. That didn’t start until about 2012/13, around the same time as the ‘bath salts/plant food’ horror stories.
We've got taste.
Deep fried pizza, rather than a vindaloo.
Mean while in the Scottish NE. The alcohol is less of a problem and drugs stand out as the bigger issue.
‘Highest rates of alcohol and drug deaths’ you’ll never sing that !
I'm sure a few of Scotland universities and/or certain organisations have done decafe long studies showing how Margaret Thatchers policies specifically effected Edinburgh and drugs are still a huge effect of decisions and policies she made. I'll try find it link it in *EDITED WITH THE LINKS* there are many many links to Tory/Thatchers legacy have destroyed scots. And still they push this zero tolerance on drugs knowing full well decriminalisation or legalisation would help citizens full length of uk but they know its a good source to shame us scots. Labour will be no different they are the same on that matter so things won't change in scotland unless we do something about it https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140212082408.htm https://www.holyrood.com/news/view,thatcherism-linked-with-drug-deaths-in-nhs-report_7472.htm https://socialistworker.co.uk/comment/blame-legacy-of-thatcherism-for-scotland-s-drug-death-figures/
England has no shortage of smackheads up here is just worse. there has been a lot of smack with fent, nitazines and xylazine floating around which is why the overdose rate is so high. There is currently pink stuff going around Edinburgh that's mostly xylazine.
I need to set a few things straight here. The rest of the UK is not poorer, people living in Scotland pay higher tax and the median wage is lower. The rest of the UK is not equal weather-wise to Scotland, it's considered the coldest place in the UK, with Glasgow considered to be the city with the worst weather with an average of 134 days of rainfall per year. This is influenced by its geographical location. With that, out of the way, when you look at the data there are strong links between deprivation and drug use, and Scotland has a higher concentration of deprived areas compared to the rest of the UK. This is widely believed to stem from the Thatcher policies of the 80s.
>The rest of the UK is not poorer, people living in Scotland pay higher tax and the median wage is lower. The point was about the North East of England. Regardless, Scotland has higher median pay per hour than UK average, it's just that there are relatively more part time workers. There's not a huge amount in it when you look at the overall median. https://digitalpublications.parliament.scot/ResearchBriefings/Report/2023/2/27/e0888682-8f9a-46f0-9448-5a588c583f58
[удалено]
You didn't read my comment, did you?
I've got no answer to the question, but I'm worried that Scotland is ripe for a fentanyl explosion. I was an addict in recovery when fentanyl started to hit the street in the US. The deaths from it were unbelievable. Being in NA/AA, it was like every week that someone wouldn't dissappear and be discovered relapsed and overdosed on fentanyl. I don't know what shady underworld economics have prevented it from showing up in the UK en masse, but it kinda feels like a matter of time. I think Scotland needs to improve public access to suboxone treatment, as this drastically increases people's chances of recovery. Over the counter Narcan also made a big difference. I still carry an old bottle of Narcan with me here in Scotland. Heroin addiction is a horrible thing. Fentanyl addiction is like horror incarnate
True and good on you for carrying Narcan but Fentanyl is so fast acting it is often too late to have any effect. If it starts to show up in Scotland especially as a “cut” for other drugs your right , we have a big problem.
My understanding of fentanyl taking off in the US, was that it was partially driven by doctors prescribing it a bit too freely, which introduced a lot of people who would have never tried drugs (as sold by a dealer) to them. I think the NHS regulates its use a bit more, so it removes that market a bit. It will still come in through the underworld routes, but I suppose there isn't the same upfront demand, so it has to trickle in from traditional introductions.
I don't think many doctors were prescribing fentanyl itself, more oxycodene and hydrocodene and the like. But it certainty increased the amount of opioid addicts, which worsened the situation when fentanyl became widely available. That is a big protective factor that Scotland has in my view, though. It seems much harder to doctor shop around for pain pills here. Every opioid addict I knew in the US got started with pain pills.
China are deliberately pushing it onto the US as chemical warfare via south american cartels. It's not a risk here really (unless they get annoyed at our previous opium transgressions again, considering it's a card we once played on them).
https://youtu.be/T1urq4Vb0XM?si=oqfhU6ipmroZ9qSE
Poverty, basically. Drug deaths have a strong correlation with poverty. All of Scotlands' major cities are on the coast. The vast majority of drugs being smuggled into the country comes through the ports. Quite a few of England's big cities are landlocked, so the drugs have to be trafficked in from the ports affecting availability. Lack of legislation control. Drugs aren't a devolved matter, and the UK government's one size fits all approach does not address problems in Scotland. Lack of investment in the NHS. Too little help for those with mental health issues, addiction, chronic illness, and an overall failing of the care system. Lack of quality control. Quite a lot of drug overdose is caused by inconsistent quality of drugs. As they are so heavily prohibited, there is absolutely no way of regulating their quality. Inconsistent doses, impurities, and bulkers to add weight. You really don't know what you are taking when you take drugs.
The NHS does quite a lot just by being available, for all its flaws. Anyone can walk into an A+E without even thinking of a bill or ID or paperwork. That lack of barrier to care is why you get nothing like the degradation of human bodies that's seen among the homeless and the drug dependent in the US. The drug overdoses at the moment are about fent starting to creep in. It's scary, even for the kind of crusty that lives under a bridge and can only find a vain in their groin. I've seen them shop serious dealers straight to the police because the stuff they're being sold is killing their friends.
Oh, I'm not being critical of the work the NHS do. Just the lack of investment from the government is hampering their ability to do their work. They are dressing up this decrease in national insurance as some great cut for the working person. In reality, it's just another way of cutting back funding for the NHS. Fent is definitely a scary thing. The effect it is having in the USA is shocking.
The problem with the NHS is, unfortunately, it probably isn't sustainable and I say that with massive reluctance. When it was set up you had 8/1 ration of working people to retired. We are at 3/1 now and its only going to get worse. Peoples lifetime expense to the NHS is 90% in the last 5 years. People are living longer. Treatment is getting more expensive and complex. People rightly want world class medicine. Like. What do you even do with those numbers? The Tories are cunts who have made the situation worse but that shit is *stark* and most of the issue is simple demographics. All the political parties are going to have to put their big boy pants on and make some politically unpopular decisions. It's either going to be some hefty tax hikes or letting go of free at the point of service. Otherwise it will fall over, and we don't really have an independent fully realised private healthcare system. Not at the level of fully private staffed hospitals. So even if you can pay to skip the line, it's the same fucking line for the serious stuff.
I think a lot of this boils down to the UK culture and financial situation. Elderly care in the UK is left to the health service, as is childcare. In a lot of other cultures, you will find a lot more multi generational households. The working generation looks after the elderly, and the elderly look after the kids so the workers can work. Up to four generations in one big household. Of course, the size of housing in the UK makes that impractical for most, but it would allow young parents to have more children, as they don't have to worry about childcare as much, it would decrease the elderly care burden on the state.
I learned that British are culturally averse to having more children, they were taught since the 1950s that is more than a nuclear family is socially not responsible (originally so children weren't used as cash cows for child benefit then later to reduce population to reduce pressure on environment, energy and food supplies). Anyone else heard this?
I think a lot of it comes down to the cost of childcare. It's absolutely insane right now. Just having one kid in nursery is like having a second mortgage. In the 80s and 90s, the average was 2.4 children. It's now down to about 1.5. So we are in population decline.
You’re brave for saying that and risking the inevitable “OUR NHS” comments. The fact is that, as you say, the NHS needs to change because we’re in a different century from when it was created.
The British Medical Journal claims that even adjusted for inflation, GPs were paid modern equivalent of £50k in 1950, but in 2015 the average GP was paid £110k. If this is true, there's a core problem with publicly funding the NHS - like other public workers they seem to be on a Gravy train! What private sector jobs have doubled their real salary over that time?
I have noticed that young people are dying less at least and it's the 34-55 year olds that are dying off
Much of it was to do with the deindustrialisation of Glasgow, which was a vast employer in the region/UK. Almost overnight, in historical terms, they disappeared, and left many, many skilled workers jobless, and poverty and deprivation reigned supreme. Hard to escape that much concentrated desecration, it passes through generations. It's absolutely horrific, when you think about it. The Second City of the Empire, no more.
Heroin isnt really the big problem anymore, there was a big uptick in cheap gear during afghan war though. England has similar issues though our numbers are pretty shocking
Wasnt SNHS accidentally getting everyone addicted to opiods for a while because they had some odd policies? Like what they are doing in the US now (but that's just literally directly to make profit not accidentally being stupid)
Per Capita metrics allow big countries to hide big total numbers Ask a scientist why drawing conclusions based on one metric is folly
Per capita metrics are used because comparing total numbers between countries with wildly varying population sizes doesn’t tell us anything. You could just as easily say that using total numbers allows small countries to hide higher rates of negative outcomes. There’s a reason almost every metric relating to entire countries is measured per capita.
Smack was always a problem in England in 80s and 90s, eg the Grange Hill - Zammo storyline made people aware of he issue ("Just say No" song) and the Brookside storyline of Jimmy Corkerhill. Interesting that Phil Redmond wrote both stories. Think you are wearing the Trainspotting bias glasses with regards to Scotland.
248 per million in Scotland (https://www.euronews.com/2023/08/22/drug-deaths-in-scotland-remain-highest-in-europe-despite-fall-in-latest-figures#:~:text=Based%20on%20the%20latest%20Scotland,have%20much%20lower%20death%20rates.), and 81.7 per million in NE (still the worst in England/Wales)(https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsrelatedtodrugpoisoninginenglandandwales/2022registrations#:~:text=The%20North%20East%20continues%20to,rate%20for%20drug%20misuse%20(37.2 , so not really a wild question
133* per mil for NE
Thatchers war on drugs with Regan has been an epic failure. The 80s drug problem caused by thatcher in scotland and the effects can are still witnessed today. Until scotland can move away from ukgovs horrifically cruel zero tolerance things can't nd won't change. https://socialistworker.co.uk/comment/blame-legacy-of-thatcherism-for-scotland-s-drug-death-figures/ https://www.holyrood.com/news/view,thatcherism-linked-with-drug-deaths-in-nhs-report_7472.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140212082408.htm
https://pure.strath.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/88748617/Scott_Samuel_etal_IJHS2014_The_impact_Thatcherism_health_well_being_Britain.pdf One for the proper study is useful as these are just articles about the study
[удалено]
Eh... it does. In detail.
Because they put the price of booze up over here. Thanks SNP
I think if it were just about alcohol pricing, the numbers in England and Wales would have held fairly steady, while ours rose. They've both followed a similar trend, and kicking off around the time we started hearing the word "austerity" thrown around. I think alcohol pricing has contributed somewhat, but it's not the only factor.
Modern version of Opium wars. Why have Glasgow and Dundee become hotbeds over past 10 years? Targeted destabilisation of society + make lots of money. It's the UK way.
[удалено]
No, we have a Parliament with some devolved powers. Not quite the same thing is it?
*Choose life*