Scotland’s latest annual drug deaths toll will not be known until December at the earliest.
Results that are usually released in the summer have been delayed after alternate measures were arranged for toxicology tests.
The Crown Office came under fire for allowing a cash wrangle with Glasgow University to disrupt the flow of critical information at a time when Scotland’s drug deaths are worse than those recorded for any other country in the world.
The pandemic then further delayed results.
National Records of Scotland (NRS) has confirmed that the figures for 2019 – widely expected to be the worst yet – will be in circulation in December.
But NRS has stressed that indicative timescales are still subject to further data being received.
Scottish Labour’s health spokeswoman Monica Lennon said such delays should not be allowed to happen again.
She said: “The Scottish Government has failed to reduce drug-related deaths and then presided over a toxicology fiasco that kept the true number of fatalities from the public. It’s been a cruel, long wait for families kept in the dark.
“From a public health perspective, timely data helps to identify patterns in substance use and inform targeted action to save lives.”
A Scottish Government spokesman said: “The necessity of this delay has been deeply disappointing.
“We understand that the Crown Office and the University of Glasgow have been working to address the backlog of toxicology cases in order to allow NRS to be able to release this publication as soon as possible.”
NRS hopes to have the 2020 figures back on track for release next summer.
Police Scotland estimates have suggested that the death rate showed signs of improvement in the early part of 2020 but got worse again as the lockdown developed.
Scottish Drug Deaths Taskforce chair Professor Catriona Matheson has also suggested that the 2019 deaths appear to be worse than the previous year.
