The latest drug death figures show government's approach must change
4 min read
Today, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has released its latest figures on drug deaths in England and Wales, revealing the latest extent of this public health crisis: 5,519 people died in 2025 due to drug use, a reduction of less than 1 per cent from last year.
In Hackney, 21 people died in 2025, the same number as the previous year.
The UK, and Scotland specifically, has the highest drug death rate in Europe. Our approach as a country is evidently failing people, families, and communities, with catastrophic consequences.
As Mayor of Hackney, and after spending over a decade working in public health, I know these numbers on a page represent far more than statistics; they are parents, someone’s child, friends, neighbours. Behind every death are loved ones left grieving and a community left asking why nothing is changing.
What is the government’s response? Police seizures of ketamine and cannabis are celebrated as being at an all-time high; and yet people continue to die, and communities continue to suffer. The war on drugs rolls on, where seeing drug use primarily as a criminal justice issue permeates our system, where drug users are considered “criminals” and “wrongdoers”. Politicians declare crackdowns on use to appear “tough on crime”, as the media continues to drive a moral panic.
This actively causes harm. The resulting stigma around drugs forces people to hide their struggle rather than seek help, stops friends from raising the alarm, and leads families to conceal the cause of death of loved ones. This is a direct consequence of UK drug policy.
All the while, global drug markets continue to evolve. Cocaine has overtaken heroin or morphine as the most frequently mentioned specific substance in drug-poisoning deaths for the first time since records began in 1993. Drug supplies are being contaminated with nitazenes, a group of synthetic opioids up to 500 times more potent than heroin. Compared to 2023, nitazenes were involved in about 3 times as many drug-related deaths in 2025.
We cannot police our way out of a public health crisis
From grassroots organisations like Release to public health teams like The Thistle in Glasgow, teams are responding in any way they can – peer support, drug treatment services, and training people to use naloxone (a life-saving intervention for opioid overdoses; opiates and opioids were involved in 42.1 per cent of all drug-poisoning deaths in 2025). But any attempts to provide more extensive support are restricted by the Home Office’s ideological insistence that drugs must be treated as criminal behaviour. Their ban on drug consumption rooms, where usage can be facilitated safely, is costing lives. The criminalisation model starts and ends with punishment. Use drugs? You’re a criminal, job done. Well, we’re looking at the results of that approach.
The growing consensus is for a new way of addressing drug use that centres public health.
This approach views drug use as something to be engaged with compassionately. It facilitates safe use and addresses the causal reasons why people use drugs problematically, offering support both with drug use and with wider circumstances that encourage it.
In practice, this means setting up safer drug consumption rooms, where people can take drugs safely, with supervision and access to further support services. To do that must include a safe supply, legal control and regulation, expanded access to care, and policies firmly rooted in scientific evidence.
Yet, as a local leader who sees a clear need for this, I am unable to act due to Home Office restrictions. The department continues to actively stop willing local authorities, like ours in Hackney, from piloting life-saving interventions, such as Overdose Prevention Centres and expanding drug testing facilities.
The international evidence base for this approach is undeniable. Countries like Switzerland have transitioned away from purely punitive models toward health-led frameworks and have seen dramatic improvements. Portugal shifted to a health-led decriminalisation model over two decades ago, resulting in drastic reductions in drug-related deaths, HIV transmission, and drug-related crime.
People might be worried about what this would look like. But in the millions of supervised injections that have taken place in Drug Consumption Rooms worldwide, no one has ever died on-site.
This approach is something that the new government might just be able to understand. For example, the Prime Minister has highlighted the need to address complex harms that homeless people face; alongside a secure home, people need access to treatment, mental health support, peer support and harm reduction services, including when they are actively using drugs. This is the exact type of support we want to provide.
Today, Cllr Allan Casey of Glasgow, my fellow co-founder of the Harm Reduction City Leaders Network, and I wrote to the PM to urge him to look at these new statistics, to visit our authorities to see harm reduction services in practice, and to give us permission to save more lives.
We cannot police our way out of a public health crisis. We are putting a modern, compassionate, and evidence-led policy approach on Burnham’s desk, as lives continue to be put on the line.
Zoë Garbett is the Green Party Mayor of Hackney
