Britain already carries one of the heaviest burdens of drug-related deaths in Europe. And yet a growing number of politicians are pushing for full legalisation as the fix. The Green Party’s deputy leader, Zack Polanski, told Sky News recently that “the war on drugs has clearly failed.” He added that England and Wales now suffers the highest drug deaths in Europe. But are those claims accurate? And would the Greens’ proposed solution actually reduce harm?

The Statistics on Drug Deaths in Britain

Polanski’s numbers are striking but need careful handling. In 2023, England and Wales recorded 93 drug poisoning deaths per million people. Estonia recorded 135 per million among 15 to 64 year olds. Latvia recorded 130 per million. Norway recorded 94 per million. England and Wales does sit among the worst performers. The claim that it holds the outright top spot in Europe is contested, though. Most official sources describe it as having one of the highest rates in western Europe.

The trend is not in dispute. Drug poisoning deaths in England and Wales have more than doubled since 2010. They have risen every single year since 2012. That is a damning record.

Scotland’s Drug-Related Deaths Show a Clear Warning

Scotland’s figures are even worse. In 2024, Scotland recorded 191 drug misuse deaths per million people. England and Wales recorded 93.9 per million in the same year. Scotland’s rate was more than double.

Scotland has spent decades trialling harm reduction policies. Since 2018, the Scottish Government championed a public health approach to drug use. It pledged to move vulnerable people out of the justice system. The Green Party uses almost identical language in its own policy platform. The results in Scotland have been devastating.

Drug deaths in Britain keep rising despite a clear drift away from enforcement. Scotland’s experience should give serious pause to anyone who believes that removing legal consequences will reduce harm.

The American Experiment With Legalisation

The United States offers the most extensive real-world test of liberal drug policy. The findings are not encouraging. Over the past two decades, roughly half of all US states have legalised cannabis. Many progressive cities have introduced open injection sites and other harm reduction schemes.

San Francisco took the experiment furthest. The results were catastrophic. In 2024, 635 people died there from unintentional drug overdoses. Districts like the Tenderloin became open-air drug markets. The city has only recently begun to recover. That recovery came not through more leniency but through new legislation enabling police to arrest those openly using drugs in public.

There is no British equivalent of Skid Row in Los Angeles. That is not an accident. It reflects decades of policy choices that have kept some clear boundary in place. Drug-related deaths in the UK would almost certainly worsen if those boundaries were removed.

What Legalisation Actually Means

Polanski frames the current approach as authoritarian and repressive. The evidence points the other way. The number of people sentenced for drug possession fell by almost half between 2012 and 2018. Arrests for cannabis cultivation dropped by more than two thirds over the same period. This is not a crackdown. It is gradual liberalisation that has coincided with rising death rates.

The Greens are not proposing a break from the current direction. They are proposing an acceleration. Full commercial legalisation would mean drugs available to buy in shops. Given what the evidence shows about drug deaths in Britain, this is a gamble the data does not support.

A Clearer Path Forward

Reducing drug-related deaths in the UK does not require making drugs easier to obtain. It requires real investment in recovery services and early intervention. It requires communities strong enough to support people before addiction takes hold. Prevention, education, and proper family support have a far stronger evidence base than legalisation.

Those who genuinely care about reducing harm owe it to those most at risk to look honestly at the evidence. Following a political narrative that mistakes permissiveness for compassion is not good enough.

Source: dbrecoveryresources