By Dan Vevers

Copyright dailyrecord

Scotland is still the drug death capital of the UK and Europe despite thousands of opioid deaths being miscounted in England and Wales, experts have said. Professor Andrew McAuley of Glasgow Caledonian University said the UK-wide picture hadn’t changed, with Scots suffering drug fatalities at a rate around three times higher than south of the border. Last week, research revealed more than 13,000 heroin and opioid deaths had been missed since 2011 by the Office for National Statistics. King’s College London found there were 39,232 opioid-related deaths between 2011 and 2022 in England and Wales – more than 50 per cent higher than previously known. Prof McAuley stressed the deaths weren’t “missing” but had been inaccurately categorised. He told the Sunday Mail : “The overall numbers the ONS count are not changed by this. “It’s not as if somebody has discovered thousands of extra deaths that are not being counted – they are still being counted. “The overall comparison of Scotland against other countries in the UK is not affected. “Scotland’s drug death rate being around three times that of the rest of the UK still absolutely holds. “What this analysis has done is address some of the uncertainty in the type of drugs involved in deaths down south.” It is complicated by the rise of “poly-drug use”, where people who have died may have several types of substances in their system including synthetic drugs like nitazenes. We previously told how superstrong nitazenes – often laced in street heroin – are on the rise in Scotland and contributed to at least 38 overdose deaths this year. In 2020, 1339 people died as a result of drug use, which has fallen to 1017 fatalities in 2024 but is still the worst rate per head in Europe.