A RECORD 5,000 Scots were taken to hospital after abusing drugs last year as the nation's ageing heroin generation became increasingly vulnerable.
The total treated has doubled since the height of the heroin epidemic in the mid-1990s, when addicts were younger and fitter, according to the NHS statistics.
Experts have long warned that heroin, almost a generation after Irvine Welsh's 1993 novel Trainspotting and despite political concern over so-called "legal highs", remains the drug posing the biggest public health threat. The substance accounted for two-thirds of all hospital drug admissions and two-thirds of those involved patients over 35.
The figures yesterday also showed the estimate of the overall number of problem drug users unchanged over the last five years, at almost 60,000. Half are thought to be over 35 - in addict terms "geriatric".
Dave Liddell, director of the Scottish Drugs Forum which we told on Monday is researching how agencies can help older users, said the figures were stubbornly high.
He said: "These figures again highlight that Scotland has a hugely challenging and long-standing drug problem for which there are no easy solutions."
Mr Liddell's group today hosts Scotland's biggest ever drugs conference in Glasgow. It aims to create a working group, backed by the Scottish Government, on how to deal with substantial numbers of ageing heroin addicts who are "ambivalent over whether they live or die".
Experts are looking to work out whether they now need specialist services for older users, who often no longer have the support of friends and family. The average age of drug death last year topped 40 for the first time.
But Mr Liddell is also eager to look beyond the Scottish Govern-ment's drugs strategy, whose rhetoric is based on the Road to Recovery and aspirations for abstinence that may prove unrealistic for vulnerable users.
Mr Liddell said: "A key basis for the response is to recognise the nature of the underlying issues which people face and which, if not dealt with, are the barriers to people effectively recovering from drug dependence. These include underlying issues of trauma; a lack of meaningful education, training and supported employ-ment; a range of social problems including housing and debt."
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: "Problem drug use among young people has decreased and this is good news.
"However, clearly there is still work to do to when it comes to some older individuals and we are not complacent. That is why it is encouraging to see the progress also being made in our world- leading Naloxone programme which saw a 67 per cent increase in the number of these take-home kits issued, helping to reverse the effects of overdose and save lives."
She added that the government would stick with its Road to Recovery strategy, which she said had cross-party support.
The new numbers refer to those checking in to a non-psychiatric hospital and diagnosed with misuse of drugs. The figure jumped from less than 2,000 in 1996-97 to 4,469 in 2012-13 and 5,028 in 2013-14. Individual admissions rose from 2,351 in 1996-97 to 5,715 in 2012-13 and then 6,516 in 2013-14.
Those figures for admissions show the concentrations of older heroin users from poor places. Two thirds of the 6,500 hospital admissions involved opioids; 1,000 were in Glasgow and Greater Clyde; 3,777 of them were over 35.
Cannabin-oids made up 11.5 per cent of hospital admissions; cocaine just 5.3 per cent. In 2012-13, around 1 in 40 Scottish men and 1 in 100 women were estimated to be problem drug users.
Inverclyde has the highest average in Scotland at 3.2 per cent, ahead of Dundee on 2.8 per cent and Glasgow on 2.76 per cent.
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