Friday September 25th 2026
Miles Briggs, MSP for Edinburgh and Lothians East, Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party writes his monthly column for Midlothian View.
This week was another dark one for Scotland.
The National Records of Scotland (NRS) announced that drug deaths had increased by 11% from 2024 to 2025, meaning Scotland still has the highest drug fatality rate in Europe. The NRS recorded 1,133 deaths, 116 more than in 2024. This means that the rate per 100,000 people is four times as high as the rate in the year 2000 when current records began.
The average age at death was only 46. Behind these statistics are 1,133 families who are grieving the loss of loved ones, and my thoughts are with them.
It is evident that the SNP’s approach to tackling Scotland’s drugs deaths crisis has failed catastrophically.
This government cannot keep doubling down on failed policies when the number of lives lost has soared. SNP ministers had a chance before the election to do the right thing by backing the Right to Recovery Bill to guarantee a right to treatment for all those who needed it. Instead, John Swinney is too busy obsessing over independence and breaking up the United Kingdom to give this devastating crisis the focus it demands. Nicola Sturgeon admitted over five years ago she took her eye off the ball on reducing drug deaths, but still SNP ministers are failing to invest in delivering the rehabilitation and recovery support needed for so many vulnerable people across Scotland.
While Edinburgh and many other parts of the country were consistent with this awful trend, I was relieved to find out that Midlothian has gone the other way. In Midlothian, drug deaths have decreased from 129 in 2024 to 96 in 2025. However, nearly one hundred lives lost is still totally unacceptable: these are fathers, partners, daughters. We must not lose perspective on the scale of this disaster.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all those working in the Midlothian and East Lothian Drugs and Alcohol Partnership for the hard work they do, especially those police officers, paramedics, and nurses on the front lines who see the devastating effects of these substances first-hand.
Unfortunately, it is the poorest areas in Scotland that have suffered most under successive neglectful SNP governments. The NRS highlights a strong relationship between poverty and drug use; our most deprived communities are 15 times more likely to suffer a drug related death than the richest ones.
Over the last 20 years this country has lost more than 16,000 people to drugs – that is equivalent to the population of Dalkeith. Speaking at the ministerial statement on drug harms on Wednesday I made it clear to Maree Todd, the Minister for Mental Wellbeing, Public Health, Sport, Alcohol and Drugs, that Scotland cannot continue with a harm-prevention strategy alone, we need to see a shift to rehabilitation and a right to recovery. The Scottish Conservatives have consistently offered a new approach to this crisis, to no avail. When will this government finally admit failure, and change course?
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