Drugs deaths and the Scottish media’s addiction to the Cringe.

At times, who are we kidding – most of the time – the British media and its outposts in Scotland seem to be engaged in a competition in which Scotland is always the loser. No matter what shortcomings or failures afflict the UK, Scotland is always the one which performs the worst. This feeds into an overarching narrative of Scottish inadequacy. Scotland is uniquely incapable, feckless, and infantile amongst the nations of the world, and we must be grateful that we have those kind and selfless grown-ups at Westminster to look after us out of nothing more than the sheer goodness of their hearts. If we were to believe the Scottish media, Scotland would not be able to find its own arse without a map, and that map is provided courtesy of the Ordnance Survey which we only have thanks to Westminster. To be fair, thanks to BBC Scotland it’s not hard for Scotland to find its arse, the Labour party in Scotland is constantly being platformed by Pacific Quay, except that is when Keir Starmer has yet again done something which proves that Anas Sarwar has all the influence on the course of the Labour government as an insect does when it’s splatted on the windscreen of a vehicle barreling down the motorway on its way to deliver some far right pandering outrage about immigrants. In those all too frequent cases Scotland’s arses are nowhere to be seen.

The infamous Scottish Cringe did not come out of nowhere. It exists and it continues to be perpetuated because it serves the interests of the traditionally Unionist Scottish establishment. The Cringe becomes a self-sustaining ‘truth’, the received wisdom that underpins and directs how Scots are supposed to look at themselves. We see this in Scotland’s anti-independence media, which exists in a permanent state of woe and misery, a state of disgrace which is oddly disconnected from the bigger picture, the UK context set and determined by Westminster priorities and policies in which Scotland finds itself. Scottish successes are downplayed or ignored when they cannot be attributed to Westminster’s grace and favour, but Scotland’s failures are Scotland’s alone. Those apparent failures are dwelt on obsessively and in great detail by an anti-independence Scottish media which loves to wallow in misery.

It has been said that misery loves company, but that’s not true when it comes to the misery propagated by the anti-independence media in Scotland, which is almost all of it. Scotland’s misery is Scotland’s fault alone.

In recent years the media in Scotland has dined out on the scandal of drugs related deaths in Scotland, solemnly telling us that Scotland has the worst rate of drugs related deaths in all of Europe and how even though drugs policy is reserved to Westminster, this must be entirely the fault of the Scottish Government as the reported incidence of drugs related deaths in Scotland is significantly higher than it is in England.

There is no argument at all that Scotland has a problem with drugs and alcohol. By the time I was in my 20s in the 1980s, I had already lost three friends to drugs. One died of an overdose, another died at the age of 20 when he tried to stop taking heroin too quickly and his liver failed. He had been addicted since he was 14, having been introduced to heroin by his older sister who herself was an addict. Their parents were alcoholics who left them to fend for themselves. His addiction had left him in a very poor physical shape and his drugs battered body was simply unable to cope with the sudden shock of withdrawal. His sister also died young due to her drug problems. She supported herself with prostitution and shop lifting and was constantly being arrested. She didn’t make it to 40. A third friend who had long battled drug use and mental health problems killed herself in her mid 20s.

So I am well aware of the trauma and grief caused by drugs and would never seek to diminish the scale of the problem. In my experience drug use is all too often a product of hopelessness, poverty, and intergenerational trauma. People self-medicate with drugs as an unhealthy coping mechanism, a mechanism which brings short term relief, but which creates even greater problems in the longer run. Drug use is a symptom of wider societal problems, problems which the Scottish Government lacks the legal and economic powers to tackle successfully. This goes far beyond the fact that drugs policy is reserved to Westminster, so are the wider macro-economic and tax and benefit policies which must must come into play if the scourge of drug misuse is to be tackled at source. Westminster’s long standing policy of criminalising addicts is plainly not working, but successive governments are too afraid of the moralistic pearl clutching of the right wing media to alter course.

The point that the Scottish media makes is that these wider societal problems are also present in England, particularly in the deprived post-industrial regions of the north of England, areas which are now proving to be fertile recruiting grounds for the vampires of the far right who seek to blame all society’s ills on migrants and ‘wokeness’. There is no doubt that these areas also face challenges with drug use. The question is, then – are drug misuse and the incidence of death from drugs really so much worse in Scotland than in England? This claim has once again been trotted out by the Daily Record which just a couple of weeks ago repeated the claim that Scotland has the worst rate of drugs related deaths in Europe. If drugs related deaths are significantly higher the UK than they are in the rest of Europe, the issue must squarely be blamed on the drugs and economic policies of successive UK Governments. But if they are much higher in Scotland than they are elsewhere in the UK, as the Daily Record and the Scottish media would have us believe, then the problem must be Scotland-specific.

But is this really true? The answer would appear to be no. A study published by the UK Civil Service over two years ago found that drugs related deaths in England and Wales suggested that the true number of drugs related deaths in England and Wales could be being underreported by as much as 25%. The research finds:

“The definitions used for drug-related death statistics are consistent across the UK, but there are important differences in data collection methods and in the death registration systems that affect these statistics. For England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the only information received by the ONS [Office of National Statistics] and NISRA [Northern Irish Statistics and Research agency] is what is included on the death certificate. The amount of information varies and can be very limited. For drug-related deaths in Scotland, NRS [National Records of Scotland] receives additional information on the drugs involved.

“In England and Wales, suspected drug-related deaths are referred to the local coroner’s service, who determine the cause of death. The ONS does not have access to post-mortem reports or toxicology results, so the accuracy of figures depends on the information provided by the coroner on the death certificate. The information on these certificates can often be incomplete, which means that figures for drug misuse are underestimates.

However in Scotland, the report explains: “In Scotland, if the death was sudden, unexplained or suspicious it is reported to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) for investigation. For these deaths a post-mortem investigation is often carried out and toxicology tests are done to see which substances are in the body. If the death involved drugs or the person was a drug user, the pathologist sends this additional information to the NRS. This records which substances were found in the body and which of them contributed to the death.”

These differences mean that the amount and quality of information held on drug-related deaths varies across the UK. In 2021, 25.1% of drug-related deaths registered in England and Wales gave no information on the specific substances involved. The equivalent figure for Scotland was 1.9%, while for Northern Ireland the figure was 6.6%. The proportion of drug-related deaths where no information about specific substances is known has remained consistent over time in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Meanwhile, the proportion of these deaths has been increasing over time in England and Wales. This has important consequences for drug-related death statistics.

The crucial point is that a death can only be recorded as drug related when this information is provided to the relevant statistical authorities but in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland this information is often missing.

The report continues: “In summary, for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the only information received by the ONS and NISRA is what is included on the death certificate. The amount of information varies and can be very limited. For drug-related deaths in Scotland, NRS receives additional information on the drugs involved.

The effect of this incomplete reporting means that as many as a quarter of drugs-related deaths in England and Wales are not being recorded as such with the effect that the incidence of drug related deaths in England and Wales is plausibly higher than it is in Scotland and that the blame for the shameful record of having the highest incidence of drugs-related deaths in Europe lies squarely with Westminster’s drug policies and the way it has presided over increasing poverty levels.
A link to the research is here

Comparability of drug-related death statistics across the United Kingdom

The point here is that this research is not new. It was published over two years ago, but during that period it has gone unreported by a Scottish media which prefers to repeat the lazy myth that Scotland has the highest incidence of drugs related deaths in Europe, not because it cares about the terrible effects of drugs on Scottish communities and individuals, but because it’s another convenient stick with which to beat the Scottish Government and to reinforce the hoary old British nationalist comfort blanket of Scotland’s supposed inadequacy.

______________________________________________________________________

I’ve added a new method to make supporting my work easier, you can now donate via Ko-fi

Or click the following link https://ko-fi.com/weegingerdug

Having abandoned Twitter I will be actively posting on BlueSky from now on. You can find me at https://bsky.app/profile/weegingerdug.bsky.social follow me there and I will generally follow back.

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

You can help to support this blog with a PayPal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address [email protected]. Or alternatively click the donate button below. If you don’t have a PayPal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button. You can also donate by PayPal by using my PayPal.me link PayPal.Me/weegingerdug
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/weegingerdug

Source