MARGARET Thatcher’s Tory government is responsible for the premature death of hundreds of working class Scottish men, says new analysis from NHS Scotland and the University of Glasgow into Scotland’s high drug mortality rate.

The report's authors says the increase in drug related deaths in Scotland is associated with a cohort of men born in the 1960s and 1970s, who, during the former Tory Prime Minister’s reign, were forced to deal with “rising income inequality” and “the erosion of hope.”

“The working class living in the deindustrialising regions, may have been particularly badly affected,” the report states.

Having become addicted in the 1980s, the men are now succumbing to the consequences of decades of problem drug use.

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In 2015 there were 706 drug deaths in Scotland, a 15 per cent increase on the year before, and 68 per cent up on 2006. The majority of those deaths were men, over the age of 35.

The statistics for 2016 are due to be released soon, and charities who work with addicts expect the number of deaths to have risen again.

Dr Andrew Fraser, Director of Public Health Science at NHS Health Scotland, said the full effect of how the cohort of men were impacted would not be known for some time, but that “it already represents the deaths of hundreds of people prematurely.”

The report says it seems likely Scotland’s high rates of suicide, and drugs and alcohol-related deaths, could “share a common causal pathway stemming from the changing social and economic policies of the 1980s”.

The University of Glasgow’s Dr Jon Minton said there was a stark difference between the sexes.

“For people born in 1960s and 70s, the risk of drug-related deaths throughout the life course was much increased, and gender and area inequalities in these risks increased even more. For these cohorts, and in every year, men tended to be two to three times as likely to die due to drugs than women, and people in the most deprived areas were two to three times as likely to die due to drugs each year as people in less deprived areas.

“These additional risk factors – of being male, and of living in a poor neighbourhood – weren’t just additive, but multiplicative, meaning men living in the poorest neighbourhoods had up to a ten-fold greater risk of a drug-related death each year than women of the same age living in more affluent neighbourhoods. The similarity in trends in both suicide and drug-related deaths suggests a common underlying cause.”

Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale said it was clear what that underlying cause was. “This shows the devastating legacy left behind by Margaret Thatcher’s callous policies,” she said. “As the report explains, the Tory government’s policies of the 1980s – which saw the destruction of many working class communities and a vast rise in unemployment – led to rising income inequality and eroded hope across Scotland and the UK.

“For many drugs became a form of escape. A generation on, hundreds of people have already died from drug use, and many remain at risk.”

The report also warned that the gig economy, and benefit sanctions of 2017 “particularly for young working-age adults, may in time lead to another cohort at high risk”.

Dugdale added: “This report must serve as a reminder to today’s politicians that we must never go back to the days when the most vulnerable in society were simply abandoned.”

Inverclyde MP Ronnie Cowan said it was time to start tackling addiction as a health issue.

“Once they’re treated as patients, people are more likely to be up front with their issues and engage with people who want to help.

“When we push them away push them away, we push them into the arms of criminals, who have no interest at all in helping people.”