Press Release
For immediate release
6th August 2018
Official Stats: UK Government Fuels Near Record Drug Deaths
Rose Humphries of the Anyone’s Child Project, who lost two sons to heroin overdoses says;
“It upsets me to see the figures for drug deaths at record levels year after year. The government is complicit in these deaths because it will not try the successful measures that work in other countries to reduce drug deaths and crime. Those of us in the Anyone’s Child campaign can see the evidence of what works – including legally regulating drugs. Why can’t the government? Behind each figure in these latest statistics was a real person, a person who once had hopes and dreams – as did my two sons who were killed by illegal heroin – but they are treated as collateral damage in the government’s drug policies. I am so sad for all the families who are left in grief.”
Rose’s Story: Heroin killed two of my sons and I want it legally regulated from Moore Lavan Films on Vimeo.
The Office of National Statistics (ONS) has released the latest drug related death statistics for England and Wales. And they make for shocking reading.
At 2503, illegal drug-related deaths have now been at or near record levels for 5 years in a row. (Statistically no significant change from 2016’s 2596). The ONS defines accidental drug related deaths as avoidable.
- 2503 deaths p/a = 7 a day, 48 a week, 209 a month – and more than road deaths.
- At 43.9 deaths per million of the population, England and Wales’ drug death rate is now over 11 times that of Portugal, at 3.86 deaths per million, and more than double the European average (20.3 per million)
- Cocaine rose for the 6th year in a row to a new record 432 in 2017 (cf. 371 in 2016).
- Fentanyl deaths increased by 29%, to a record 75 in 2017 (cf. 58 in 2016).
- Deaths from Ecstasy fell slightly to 56 (cf. 63 in 2016).
Martin Powell, Transform Drug Policy Foundation said;
“After five years of record or near record drug related deaths, the UK Government has nowhere left to hide. They are responsible for vulnerable people dying in droves, because they are blocking, or refusing to fund, measures proven to save lives in other countries. No one has ever died from an overdose in a supervised drug consumption room or heroin prescribing clinic, anywhere. In Portugal – where drug use is decriminalised – the drug death rate is less than a tenth of ours. So Government claims that these deaths are all the result of an aging population of drug users is a lie.
The Government must fully fund drug treatment, stop criminalising people who use drugs, and allow supervised drug consumption rooms now. Longer term, all political parties should back legal regulation of the drug market to take it out of the hands of criminals, save lives, reduce crime, and protect our communities.”
Contact:
Martin Powell, Head of Campaigns, 0787 567 9301 martin@tdpf.org.uk
Jane Slater, Anyone’s Child Programme Manager, 0117 325 0295 jane@tdpf.org.uk
Notes
- Transform Drug Policy Foundation is a UK and Mexico based think tank campaigning for the legal regulation of drugs www.tdpf.org.uk
- Read more about Rose’s story at Anyone’s Child: Families for Safer Drug Control https://anyoneschild.org/rose-and-jeremy/ Anyone’s Child is a Transform Project
- The ONS 2017 UK drug related deaths statistics are available from https://www.ons.gov.uk/releases/deathsrelatedtodrugpoisoninginenglandandwales2017registrations
- There were 1792 deaths on UK roads in 2016 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/648081/rrcgb2016-01.pdf
- Portugal and Switzerland have aging drug users – but they are not dying of overdoses. At 43.7 deaths per million UK illegal drug related death rate is 11 times that of Portugal (3.86), where deaths fell dramatically across all ages after it decriminalised possession of drugs in 2001, encouraging people to seek help, and putting money saved into treatment. In 2016 just 27 people died from drug related deaths in the whole of Portugal. European average is 20.3 deaths per million (EMCDDA 2018).
- Drug decriminalisation in Portugal: setting the record straight http://www.tdpf.org.uk/blog/drug-decriminalisation-portugal-setting-record-straight
- In Switzerland aging drug users die primarily from physical illnesses like heart, liver and lung diseases not overdose because they have access to safer drug consumption rooms (DCR) and heroin prescribing clinics (HAT). (Dr. Thilo Beck 2016). After introducing these measures deaths from opioid related drugs fell by two-thirds Monitorage Suisse des Addictions, http://www.suchtmonitoring.ch/fr/3/7.html?opioides-mortalite
- No one has died from an overdose, anywhere in the world, in a supervised drug consumption room (EMCDDA 2017) or a Heroin Prescribing Clinic.
The problem is the drug crisis is interconnected with other enormous problems with the way our society currently functions. We can change one cog, such as decriminalizing limited possession, and providing much more support for addicts under the health system, which would be an immediate and very helpful step we could take. But we need to change all sorts of other things, that surround the drugs crisis.
At a much deeper level, I believe drugs policy in the UK forms part of a diabolical system of control… it very roughly goes something like this…
1. Addictive substances are prohibited by laws.
2. Prohibition artificially drives up price for addictive substances. The large profits which are available provide an alternative method of regular income for the Criminal classes, compared to traditional crime which previously targeted the rich.
3. Addicts conduct low level acquisitive crime to fund their purchase of addictive substances.
4. Acquisitive crime is low level shoplifting, muggings, burglaries, theft, fraud, which affects the majority of the public. Thus low level Criminal activity is distributed across the great mass of people, rather than being concentrated on the rich.
5. Middle classes call on the government to protect them from such low level crimes, with a police force, and erosion of their civil liberties.
6. Criminals involved in distribution are occasionally culled by the government, to keep their numbers from getting out of control, which also maintains the substances high price and attractive profit margins.
Effectively, the criminal classes have been diverted away from preying on the rich. They now prey off the poor and suffering. The poor & suffering prey on the middle class to fund their addiction. The middle class scream for protection. The government grants protection in return for the middle class losing some of their civil liberties. There are of course many other players in this game, and the relationships are complex, but that is a very rough explanation of the system.
The excellent result of this for the rich and powerful of the establishment is a self funding system, wherby they are no longer preyed on by the criminal classes, whilst the middle classes are prevented from challenging them, and the poor and hopeless are also controlled. It’s win win win for the rich and powerful in the establishment.
I have thought for many years that it is a disgusting strategy of control… One can see it’s roots in Britain’s shameful Opium Wars with China. The establishment understand the system well, and have deployed an alternative modified system here in the UK. I hate it with a passion. I wish the public could see through it.
However, I hope the growing seriousness of the situation forces the establishment to retire the UK’s current drug strategy. I suspect this drug model may already be a busted flush… ease of access to illicit substance is increasing competition for supply… this drives down prices… which are already being driven down by powerful and cheap new narcotics… the government has thrown resources at trying to stop this erosion of their model, trying to restrict supply, keeping prices high, and criminal distributors controlled… but I think they are, and will continue, to lose control.
It seems relatively easy to bring 0.1 gram of Carfentanil into the UK, which is the rough equivalent of 500 grams of Heroin. It’s extremely difficult to stop such small physical quantities. People will keep doing this whilst there is money to be made.
However, I would not want the rich and powerful to use “Anyones Child” to establish a new system of control and income via the semi-private clinics and private pharmaceutical companies. I want to see the current system totally and utterly smashed.
Portugals experience, and their rock solid statistics certainly show a way forward, although they are only a beginning. Addiction should be dealt with as a health and social problem (not a criminal issue at all), we should be helping addicts as fellow human beings. It will be a painful, it will require changes, and some sacrifices, but it will be for the best for our society in the long term, and we need to act, quickly.
We need to retire this model, and the public need should scream and clamor to achieve that. We want rid of this old and backward drugs model that grows like a carbuncle on our society.