SNP need to do more to tackle drug deaths, says Kirkcaldy MP
Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath MP Melanie Ward has written to the Scottish Government after it emerged that a simple commitment made by Scottish Government Drugs Minister Maree Todd MSP to a Fife community group has been quietly dropped.
This comes as new figures show 60 people died from drug misuse in Fife last year, amid a nationwide rise in drug deaths.
In January, Ms Ward, the MP for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy constituency, brought Scottish Government officials and Ms Todd to Philp Hall in Linktown, to hear directly from the community, including the story of a mother who lost three of her four children to drugs.
Ms Ward says that when confronted with these accounts, the Minister offered no solutions, only a single, specific commitment: that Linktown Community Action would be invited to present to the Serious Organised Crime Taskforce.
Eight months on, neither Linktown Community Action nor Ms Ward's office have heard anything further on this commitment.
National Records of Scotland figures, published on September 23, show drug misuse deaths in Fife are now four times higher than twenty-five years ago.
Drug-related deaths rose 11 per cent across Scotland as a whole, to 1,133 – 116 more than the previous year, and four times the number recorded when records began in 2000.
888 Fifers have lost their lives to drug misuse since 2010, when regional figures were introduced.
In her letter this week, Ms Ward challenged the Minister's failure to follow through on her sole commitment, and called for immediate serious action to help communities like Linktown struggling to cope with this tragedy.
Ms Ward, said: “For years, Scotland has been the drug death capital of Europe. The situation is far worse here than in the rest of the UK.
“60 of our own Fifers died because of drug misuse last year. That's a national scandal and a tragic, preventable loss of life.
“In January, I brought the Scottish Government Drugs Minister to the Links to hear moving testimony directly from a community living with this crisis and the immense harm that it causes.
“The one thing she promised them, a meeting with the Serious Organised Crime Taskforce, hasn't happened. I have written to Maree Todd to ask for answers and action.”
She added: “The Scottish Government must do better for Fife.”