A former nurse turned politician this week insisted she is going down all avenues to prevent more lives being cut short by drugs in Dumfries and Galloway.
South of Scotland MSP Emma Harper was saddened to learn that the rate of drug deaths in this region had climbed from 22 in 2020 to 35 in 2021 – one of the biggest rises in the country.
While heroin and methadone overdoses remain the number one cause of death, this is followed closely by people dying due to mixing benzodiazepines, such as diazepam or the illicit version ‘street valium’, with other drugs and alcohol.
Naloxone is a drug now used by paramedics and trained relatives of drug addicts to reverse an overdose.
Mrs Harper, who worked as a nurse for 30 years, is now investigating whether or not a similar drug could be made available to prevent overdoses due to benzodiazepines.
She said: “It’s really hard to talk about because there are people whose family members – sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, mums and dads – that have lost their lives.
“Locally and rurally, there’s the problem of the blue benzodiazepines (street valium), and nobody knows the doses that are in them because these pills come from somewhere else and are really dangerous when taken with alcohol.
“With my nurse head on, it’s really worrying that people are taking multiple drugs which have similar modes of action in reducing the capacity to stay awake, and then on top of that having health conditions.
“Naloxone is used for heroin overdose, but we don’t have a reversal agent for benzodiazepines.
“We do in the hospital though. When I worked in the hospital we gave an agent in a very controlled way but because of seizure risk for benzodiazepines there isn’t an equivalent being used at the moment.
“So, that’s research I’m doing – to see if there is a Naloxone equivalent for benzos.”
Mrs Harper also said that leaders of Dumfries and Galloway’s drug and alcohol partnership are open to working more closely with their counterparts in the Scottish Borders, along with other rural regions where drug death rates are lower. She aims to help facilitate that to find new solutions to this area’s high drug death rate.
The SNP politician also called for a whole new approach to tackling drug abuse in Scotland.
She said: “Yes we need to do everything within the power that the Scottish Parliament has to reduce drugs deaths, but truly treating people with a health-focused approach rather than a criminal approach absolutely helps to reduce stigma and support people to find what’s led them on a pathway of drugs.
“We need to use a holistic medical approach and take the criminality out of it.”
