Former Labour minister Sir Ian McCartney has accused SNP ministers of having "completely capitulated" on Scotland's drug deaths crisis, and revealed that he cried listening to the Scottish Government's response to the latest figures.
The former MP lost his son Hugh to a heroin overdose in 1999, while he was serving as a minister in Tony Blair's government with responsibility for drugs policy. Hugh was 23.
Official figures published last month showed 1,133 people died from drug misuse in Scotland in 2025, an 11 per cent rise on the previous year and the worst death rate in Europe. Lab-made nitazenes were implicated in a growing share of deaths.
Sir Ian McCartney: 'We've completely capitulated'
Sir Ian said: "I continue to be appalled by the death rate. It's a long-term issue that's been allowed to go so far we're left dealing with an epidemic.
"It's not just that we haven't got a grip on this, the truth of the matter is that we've completely capitulated. Ministers have got no sense of how bad it is and no sense of what needs to be done.
"When I heard the minister in the Scottish Parliament talking about it, I cried listening to it, it was so bad."
Message to the First Minister
He urged First Minister John Swinney to build a cross-party response. He said: "My message to John Swinney would be, for goodness sake make this an all-party, all-community issue to drive fundamental change on how we're handling this issue."
He added that the government could not claim progress: "Most governments can say, well, we've helped sort this out or that out. This one can't. It hasn't."
'The next generation'
Sir Ian, 75, also linked the crisis to poverty, warning: "Poverty among children in Scotland is producing the next generation who will get killed and injured by drugs unless we do something about it."
Scotland's first drug-checking service had been due to open in Glasgow this month but has been delayed. Scottish ministers have pointed to an increasingly toxic and unpredictable drug supply.
