The number of people who died from using drugs in Dundee has fallen by five in 2021 - the second such fall in the city in recent years.
A total of 52 drug-related deaths were recorded for last year, down from 57 in 2020, and a further fall from a recent peak of 72 in 2019. Opiates and opioids such as heroin and methadone were implicated in 48 out of the 52 deaths and so-called "street benzos" - benzodiazepine drugs of varying strengths - were implicated in 40.
Dundee still holds the undesirable title of the drugs deaths capital of Scotland - with an average of 45.2 deaths per 100,000 people every year over the last five years, more than twice the Scottish average and higher than any other council area. Between 2000 and 2004, the average was just 5.9 deaths per 100,000 each year.
