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Drug related deaths: learning from the past [blogs.biomedcentral.com]

 

It has been proposed that drug related deaths in Scotland, which have been rising since the 1990s, can be attributed to the social, economic and political contexts of the 1980s. Findings from research published today in BMC Public Health add support to this idea and here, lead author of the study Dr Jane Parkinson, discusses the delayed consequences that policies and resulting social conditions have on health and what current drug policy in Scotland can do to support this generation.

2016 saw, for the third consecutive year, the highest number of drug related deaths ever recorded in Scotland. In that year, 867 people lost their lives to drugs. This amounts to a 23% rise on 2015, and more than double the number of deaths of ten years ago (421 in 2006). Rates have continued to rise since the 1990s and they continue to contribute to Scotland’s higher mortality rates overall, relative to the rest of Western Europe.

From the 1980s, less and less of this higher mortality could be explained by association with deprivation alone. It has been proposed that this could be because the social, economic and political contexts of the 1980s created a delayed negative health impact. Indeed, we have found this to be the case for the trends in suicide in Scotland, which also rose in the 1990s.

[For more on this story by Dr Jane Parkinson, go to http://blogs.biomedcentral.com...rning-from-the-past/]

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This study asks the right questions.  I wish we would do that in America.  When all the 15 year olds are anxious or cutting people look at what is happening that week or that year (social media, college pressure).  I think the spike in teen suicide and mental illnesses relate to ACEs from 0-3, the time in life when emotional self regulation is born.

Scotland was one of the European nations noted in a 1999 or 2000 New Scientist journal article, about the dilemma European Coroners faced with what initially appeared to be heroin overdoses, but many victims appeared covered with black spots on their skin surface--due to "Anthrax-tainted Heroin". Mules that transported burlap bags of harvested Opium poppies in Afghanistan, apparently contracted the Anthrax, which permeated their skin through the burlap and into the opium. Processing the Opium apparently did not 'kill' the Anthrax. Thankfully, the assorted European coroners 'compared notes'.

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