GPs in Scotland are turning away many drug addicts in favour of middle-class patients who “manipulate the system” to secure preferential treatment, campaigners have claimed.
A record 1,339 people died from overdose or other drug-related incidents last year, almost all under the age of 65.
Comparisons have been drawn with coronavirus, which killed 651 people under the age of 65 in Scotland last year and which prompted an unprecedented public health response to protect the elderly, who have accounted for 90 per cent of deaths during the pandemic.
Austin Smith, policy officer at the Scottish Drugs Forum, told The Sunday Show on BBC Radio Scotland that some drug users did not even have access to a GP. “It is perfectly legitimate for a GP to say, ‘you have got a drug problem and I am not accepting you on to my books’,” he said. “That is not acceptable.”
Smith said that GPs and other health workers preferred responsible citizens who kept a diary over drug users who tread a fine line between death and recovery. The educated middle classes had learnt to “manipulate the system to work for us, articulate what we need [and] demand it”, he said. “If you are a democratic politician you know there is not a whole lot of votes in supporting those [poorer] communities.”
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The Scottish government has pledged to spend £250 million over the next five years to tackle the problem, equivalent to £50 million a year, or 0.3 per cent of NHS Scotland’s £16 billion annual budget. Smith said that politicians must “follow the money” as he cast doubt on the NHS’s ability to spend the money effectively. “The NHS will need real leadership and support to change a habit of a lifetime in terms of marginalising people,” he added.
Chris Birt, deputy director for Scotland at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a poverty charity, said that the deprived were 18 times more likely to die from drugs, and healthy life expectancy in the most deprived communities was only 47 — 25 years less than the richest parts of Scotland.
Kit Malthouse, a Home Office minister, urged the Scottish government to adopt its £50 million Project Adder strategy, which disrupted 80 criminal gangs and oversaw a 12 per cent rise in people entering treatment in a pilot scheme in Blackpool in 2019.
The Home Office continues to resist calls from the SNP and drug charities to open “fix rooms” where addicts can inject drugs under supervision.
