Our latest study in The Lancet Public Health examined the extent to which opioid-agonist therapy (OAT) in Scotland is protective against drug-related deaths (DRD) and how this effect has varied over time thelancet.com/journals/lanpu… THREAD on key findings 👇

The day drug death figures come out is horrific. How is it conscionable that these continue to increase? Sympathies to the drug minister having to step back for cancer treatment but why is she is only minister with this portfolio? It's health, housing, education and more...

Classic radio fail there - cut off before getting my final key point in🙄 anyway, what I meant to add was 'the response in Scotland remains too slow and not flexible enough to respond to changes in the market. There are still not enough people engaged with treatment'.

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Scotland's first legal drugs consumption zone will open on October 21 after years of legal wrangling. dailyrecord.co.uk/news/drug-cons…

JUST OUT! The new 2023-24 annual report from WEDINOS Project. The UK's largest public drug testing service & the heart of the drug checking & #harmreduction response in Wales. WEDINOS analysed & reported on over 7000 samples submitted last year 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 wedinos.org/resources/down…

🗞️Publication alert! Testing the performance of the first commercially available nitazene test strips (BTNX, Rapid ResponseTM) for drug checking purposes. Just out in Harm Reduct. J.📄👇 doi.org/10.1186/s12954… 🙏Christophe Stove Marthe Vandeputte

The horrifying rise in drug-related deaths in Scotland has seen a *massive* shift in the age profile of people dying. In 2000 half of drug deaths were people under 30. In 2022 it was 10%. In 2000 8% of drug deaths were people over 45. In 2022 it was 49%.

Faith No More. “From Out of Nowhere.” December 1990. SNL. John Goodman introducing them here led to perhaps one of the greatest late night TV performances of all time. No punches pulled.

👎🏻 another dreadful decision

🧵In 2021 Oregon became the first state to decriminalize drugs. It recriminalized last week, after three years. There were many reasons; one was because overdoses rose sharply. Our new study finds, critically, this was *not* a result of decriminalization. jamanetwork.com/journals/jaman…