Edinburgh August 6, 2021
Number 7 in my newsletters on Scottish current affairs – sign up to receive them by email here
Scotland’s drug death numbers for 2020 were shocking – much higher than any other European country, it seems, and at about the same level as the US, where drug overdose is now often classed as a “disease of despair.
The Scottish statistics show drug deaths are massively more common in areas of deprivation – and that gap has been getting bigger.
Reading about this reminded me of the ‘rat park’ experiment – this is recounted in one of the most popular ever TED talks. 17 million people have watched Johann Hari talk about “why everything you thought you knew about addiction was wrong”.
Hari explains an experiment by psychologist Bruce Alexander in Vancouver in which rats were offered the choice between water laced with drugs or plain water. While rats kept alone in a bare cage would almost invariably overdose on the drugged water and soon die, rats kept together in enriched environments almost never touched it.
Scotland’s drug addiction began in the overnight deindustrialisation of the Thatcher years and over time it became endemic in certain areas. People became trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty and deprivation which can be very hard to break out of.
Scotland’s peripheral housing schemes are often poorly served with amenities such as parks, sporting facilities, places to grow or buy nutritious food. It is hard for people to find a decent job, build strong social networks, things that might help to break the cycle of addiction.
What would a human version of ‘rat park’ look like? Portugal has tried to do this, offering work and support to addicts and their communities. Initiatives like community crofts where people could grow food, training, work placements and access to mental health support could help.
But sadly, the reality facing Scotland’s most deprived communities looks very different. The UK government is planning to remove the £20 a week uplift in universal credit at the same time as Brexit and Covid push food prices up. It will be a challenge for the Scottish government to mitigate the effects of this triple whammy on deprived communities.
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