So what happened?

In 2011, Scotland's then-minister for community safety, Fergus Ewing, oversaw the introduction of the naloxone-on-release scheme.

Prisoners were initially targeted with naloxone when Scotland begun funding the medication for public health use in 2011

The medication had been used for decades in clinical settings, but the goal was to cut deaths among inmates with a history of heroin use in the high-risk period immediately after leaving prison.

"The problem then was sudden deaths after custody," said Roy Robertson, a professor of addiction medicine at Edinburgh University who was chair of Scotland's National Forum on Drug-Related Deaths at the time the naloxone initiative was implemented.

"People were coming out of prison and dying within days because they had lost tolerance - they came out, took their usual dose and died."

READ MORE: Scotland's drug death crisis in charts 

Used in time, naloxone can reverse the effects of a potentially fatal opioid overdose by kick-starting the drug user's breathing until emergency services arrive.

Between 2011 and 2013, roughly 12,000 naloxone kits were issued to prisoners on release.

Researchers comparing outcomes before and after found that it had cut the proportion of opioid-related deaths in the four-week post-prison period by around 36 per cent, saving an estimated 42 lives.

"That was a real success story for naloxone, but as always with these things it was taken to be a panacea," said Prof Robertson.

Since then, naloxone has been piloted by the police and ambulance service, and increasingly made available through pharmacies, GPs, outreach clinics and shelters to people at risk of overdose, as well as their friends and family.

THN = take-home naloxone (Source: Public Health Scotland)

Between April 2011 and March 2021, more than 94,000 publicly-funded kits were supplied in Scotland, climbing steadily from around 2,500 in 2011/12 to more than 22,000 in 2020/21.

Since February 2019, naloxone has also been available as a nasal spray (where previously it had to be injected), making it much easier to use.

And yet, drug misuse deaths have gone from 527 in 2013 to 1,330 in 2021.

Nonetheless, developing an even more extensive naloxone network was among the key recommendations in the the Scottish Drug Deaths Taskforce report published last week.

The evidence is that it hasn't made a difference. Deaths have gone up.

READ MORE: Scotland-led study paves way to faster elimination of Hepatitis 

Prof Robertson, who now chairs the Scottish Government's advisory group on drug-related harm, is sceptical.

"We did have great hopes for naloxone, but I don't think we can assume that the more you put out the better it'll get.

"The evidence is that it hasn't made a difference. Deaths have gone up.

"The current programme where naloxone appears everywhere – on TV, on buses, basically saying to people 'we could all save a life' – that's a poor use of resources.

"You're putting out a lot of Naloxone for very little result.

"Most of it gets wasted and ends up lying there going out of date, it gets lost, and not used at all.

"To sort out this major problem, it's not the answer."

The difference in rates of drug death between the most and least deprived Scots has climbed from four-fold in 2001, to five-fold in 2013, and 15-fold by 2021

One drug user in Glasgow was reportedly revived nine times last year by homeless charity volunteers equipped with naloxone, leading to concerns that the medication can become a "sticking plaster" as much as a life-saver.

It can also leave users feeling "strung out and rotten", spurring them to seek a new fix, while doing nothing to tackle the poverty, despair, and trauma that underpin so much drug dependency.

The real standout figure is not the 1% drop in deaths; it is the widening gulf of inequality in drug misuse deaths over the past decade. 

In 2013, the most deprived Scots were 12 times more likely to suffer a fatal overdose compared to the most affluent. By 2019, the difference was almost 20-fold.