Drugs activists are hosting an online summit today to demand that drug users are not forgotten during the coronavirus crisis.
Favor Scotland and the ‘You Keep Talking, We Keep Dying’ campaign will hold their ninth monthly event on Friday from 12pm until 2.30pm.
Joining the Zoom conference call will be Record columnist Darren ‘Loki’ McGarvey and experts including Professor Catriona Mathieson, chair of the Scottish Drug Deaths Task Force.
Rosanna O’Connor from Public Health England, and Stephen Wishart from Shelter Scotland, will also lay down what special measures are needed during the current crisis and taking questions from an online audience.
Annemarie Ward, Favor CEO, said: “Governments are rightly focusing all their resources on fighting coronavirus right now.
“But drug deaths can’t be forgotten because we have a bigger crisis on our hands right now. We still need to see more action from the Scottish Government to increase rehabilitation and recovery services.
“We are hearing that supply of some drugs has dried up but that might mean more people turning towards street benzodiazepines (blues), which already count for so many of Scotland’s drug deaths.
“If we’re not careful, we will come out the other side of coronavirus with drug deaths going even higher, and Scotland already has the most deaths in Europe for our population. We can’t afford to let this awful situation spiral any further.”
The chat section of the online chat will be open for media to ask questions, which the host can feed to the speakers.
•You can join the Zoom call by following this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/256626180
