The Scottish Parliament has set up a ‘people’s panel’ to look at ways of tackling drug-related harms, it has announced.
Last month the parliament sent 5,000 letters to residential addresses across the country selected at random from the Royal Mail’s database, with 25 people then chosen to form the panel. Panel members – who are ‘broadly representative of the Scottish population’, the parliament says – will consider what the country needs to ‘do differently’ to reduce drug-related harms.
The panel will meet over one weekend this month and one next month to hear from people with lived experience, as well as people working in the sector, academics, researchers, and representatives from the Scottish Drugs Forum, Scottish Families Affected by Alcohol and Drugs and Community Justice Scotland. A final report will then be produced identifying what the panel sees as the key issues, with recommendations for further action.
Scotland recorded more than 1,170 drug-related deaths last year, 80 per cent of which involved opiates or opioids. People in Scotland’s most deprived areas are 15 times more likely to die from drug misuse compared to those in the least deprived, says National Records of Scotland.
‘The number of drug-related deaths and the impact of drug-related harms has been a cause for concern for many years,’ said convenor of the parliament’s Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, Clare Haughey. ‘It is an issue which deserves national attention and that’s why it’s so important a range of views from across Scotland are heard. Holding a people’s panel on this topic is an opportunity for a broad section of Scotland’s society to shape political discourse, to consider this matter in detail and to make recommendations which can help tackle this issue.’