The SNP’s failure to tackle Scotland’s drug death epidemic is a catastrophe for Glasgow. 

The numbers have been well reported over the last few days – 1172 lives ended by drugs, thousands of grieving parents, partners and children.

The drug death rate in Scotland is 2.7 times higher than England and Northern Ireland. It is also around 2.7 times higher than when the SNP came to power at Holyrood in 2007.

This is the SNP’s drug death shame.

And it’s Glasgow that pays the price for the Scottish Government’s repeated failure over 17 years in power to reduce drug deaths.

They cut funding – CUT FUNDING – by £150 million in 2015.  And guess what happened? – the death rate soared.

And nowhere more than in Glasgow’s most challenged communities, where drug deaths are 15 times more likely than the Scottish average.

I and my Labour colleagues live in and represent some of our most deprived city communities.  We all know people behind these grim statistics.  We all know families who have lost loved ones to addiction.

The SNP squeal that they don’t have enough money to change things. But the Scottish Government has more money than ever before, it’s up to them to prioritise where it’s spent.

It should be on this.  This is literally a matter of life and death.

Nicola Sturgeon was warned what cutting support for this would do – she did it anyway and now it’s our communities and families that are left paying the unbearable price.

It’s not just the Scottish Government that has

failed Glasgow, it’s the SNP-led city council too.

People who work in addictions know the score too – and it is too much for them. They are quitting, retiring and in some cases, forced to go off on long-term sick, because of the horror of their jobs.

They are horrendously underfunded and overstretched because the SNP-led council, like their colleagues in Holyrood, are not providing the support they need.

For these hard-working people, the reality of drug deaths is a weekly occurrence, finding clients that they have poured their heart and soul into helping, dead.  It’s a job that none of us could cope with.

The biggest failure here is one of leadership.

Every year these drug death figures are published and every year the SNP says it’ll do more.  Task forces have been set up, promises have been made.

But when you look at the trend over the last six years, the numbers have essentially flatlined.  The SNP is doing nothing to fix this.  They’re doing nothing to save lives.

While the talking continues, people are dying.

The only way to reduce the number of drug deaths is to reduce the number of people using drugs. That needs investment in recovery, rehabilitation and prevention.

And it is an investment.  Because every person that recovers from addiction is someone able to keep their family together, get into work or training and lead the life they deserve.

It saves governments – local and national – a fortune in the cost of providing addiction services, family services, healthcare, justice services and so on.

It’s high time the SNP took their heads out of the sand and prioritised Glasgow’s drug death catastrophe. 

It’s time for leadership.