Campaigners have warned of a new tsunami of overdose deaths as the cost of living crisis bites.
Annemarie Ward, CEO of the FAVOR UK charity, said Scotland must redouble its focus on the national emergency.
And she said people with lived experience of drugs should be powered by £7 million in funding to enable Scotland to benefit from such a vital resource.
Speaking at FAVOR’s Recovery Rising conference in Glasgow, Ward said fuel poverty, rising food costs and addiction are causing a deadly perfect storm.
She said: “Everything gets worse as the cost of living gets worse.
“There could be a new tsunami of extra deaths due to overdoses as the poorest communities gets squeezed, as usual, worse than the rest of society.
“That’s why we cannot, as a society, start to look the other way when we still have the highest drug deaths in Europe.
“If anything we should be redoubling our efforts because there will most certainly be many deaths that are down to a combination of addiction and a squeeze of the cost of eating and heating homes.”
Ward said the conference in Glasgow had shown a dedicated hardcore of experts with lived experience of drugs are ready to give their all to combat the problem.
But she said more cash should be given to such groups, which she claims are being edged out of the debate by the Scottish Government.
She said: “The knowledge is here, inside this room, and we need these people to be allowed to bring their expertise to the table and start getting more people into treatment that works.
“We still lag miles behind the rest of the UK in getting people into treatment and in getting skilled people with lived experience involved in our treatment models.”
Ward added: “We are asking for 7% per cent of the Scottish treatment budget- around £7 million pounds for £95 million set aside.
“We need higher value to be placed of groups representing lived experience, as they should be a far bigger part of the solution. Otherwise the most vital resource we have is simply going to waste.”
Author and anti-poverty campaigner Darren McGarvey agreed that the cost of living crisis is going to make the drug deaths crisis worse.
He said: “The cost of living crisis is going to exacerbate the existing issue that we have.
“This means that people who are on the sharper end of inequality are going to be overexposed.
“Unemployment and residential instability will be rife and there will be an impact on people, particularly those with kids.
“So anybody who is managing an addiction or anybody who is trying to get help will be hit hard because there’s going to be stress on the services that they rely on.”
McGarvey said Scotland's existing drug services are in need of an overhaul.
He added: “Scotland has a dedicated drugs policy minister but I can’t help but think she has been put installed into a role that is doomed to fail because of the dysfunctional way services are set up.
“She has gone out there and listened to people but she’s been sucked into funding whoever has the most resources or was the most persuasive or who sounded like they know the talking about.
“The net result of that is that people with lived experience have been sold short.
“People who have lived through addiction can carry emotional baggage and it can be difficult for politicians to engage with them, because they speak more frankly than others in this big network of quango services.
“People with lived experience often find themselves dismissed because they don’t know the jargon or because they present their arguments in an emotional way.
“This is something that needs to change.”
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