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As Scotland's 'Trainspotting' Generation Ages, the Dead Pile Up
- arethuza 7y agoScotland is a tiny country but it never ceases to horrify me at the depth of the social and health divisions between different parts of the country, Scotland is often described as the "sick man of Europe" and Glasgow in particular has a remarkably bad life expectancy - the "Glasgow Effect": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_effect I can strongly recommend Darren McGarvey's Poverty Safari a personal account of a deprived childhood on the outskirts of Glasgow. Edit: Something I find grimly fascinating is the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) and its interactive map visualisation: https://simd.scot https://simd.scot
- lucideer 7y agoWhile this is most pronounced in Glasgow, this is something that's seen at smaller but significant levels throughout the UK (outside of Scotland), so I don't think it's particular to that country. Wales, Northern Ireland, and the north of England (Liverpool and Manchester are specifically mentioned in the Glasgow effect Wikipedia article) have similar stories.
- adam-a 7y agoThe comparison to Liverpool and Manchester is that Glasgow sees worse life expectancy despite similar climate, population, wealth etc.
- lucideer 7y agoYup. It brings them up as similar, but less severe comparisons. I commented because I thought the implication that Glasgow/Scotland is anomalous seemed odd, rather than simply being the extreme low-point in a general regional trend.
- laurencerowe 7y agoThe Glasgow effect is notable because it’s not explained by the usual factors of poverty. If you graph life expectancy vs poverty, Glasgow is an outlier, an anomaly from the trend line.
- DonaldFisk 7y agoThere was a recent study which suggested that Glaswegians’ higher risk of premature death was caused by rehousing skilled workers in new towns, and leaving the poorest behind: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jun/10/glasgow-effect-die-young-high-risk-premature-death https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jun/10/glasgow-effec...
- douglasfshearer 7y agoHaven't seen this data in the form of an interactive map before. For anyone else wondering "Geographic Access" is based on public transport times to selected public services. This is outline in the methodology documentation [0]. [0] https://www2.gov.scot/simdpublictransport https://www2.gov.scot/simdpublictransport
- jlangenauer 7y agoI’ll add my recommendation for “Poverty Safari”, it’s an eye-opening read.
- smcl 7y agoThanks for sharing that map it's fascinating. Quite eery that knife-shaped area of orange/red in the west of Edinburgh from Sighthill into Haymarket - it is so pronounced and so contained between the train lines. I used to take the bus out from the city to Heriot-Watt University and both 25 and 34 routes zig-zag through that area and it's a bit grim. Playing 5-aside in the pitches at Sighthill was also a fun adventure.
- arethuza 7y agoI worked at Riccarton for a few years and cycled from Leith - had a few late night "adventures" including someone throwing a brick at my head, which fortunately missed.
- DanBC 7y agoSomething similar to SIMD for England is the Atlas of Variation: https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/atlas-of-variation https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/atlas-of-variation Fingertips also provide a range of useful information: https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/ https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/
- smackay 7y agoI don't want to make this overtly political but there is often good news on https://thoughtcontrolscotland.com/ https://thoughtcontrolscotland.com/ The Scottish Government is at least trying to address the problems with some degree of success and a certain amount of innovation, which the posts on the above blog often feature. However there is clearly a long way to go.
- gnulinux 7y ago> Scotland is often described as the "sick man of Europe" Off topic. So I thought the "sick man of Europe" was used exclusively to describe the Ottoman Empire and dig into this and turns out there has been multiple countries in different eras called the "sick man of Europe". Read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_man_of_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_man_of_Europe > Scotland has been called "sick man of Europe" several times, but for health reasons instead of economic.[26]
- panzagl 7y agoIn the US one of the most persistent areas of poverty and opioid abuse (Appalachia) was largely settled by Scots displaced during the 18th Century. I wonder if anyone has done any research into a correlation, it not there's at least a master's thesis in it for some sociology student somewhere.
- chrisfinne 7y agoThomas Sowell digs into this in his book "Black Rednecks and White Liberals" quote from the book's Wikipedia page: Sowell argues that the black ghetto culture, which is claimed to be "authentic black culture", is actually a highly dysfunctional white southern redneck culture which existed during the antebellum South. This culture came, in turn, from the "Cracker culture" of the North Britons and Scots-Irish who migrated from the generally lawless border regions of Britain.
- ralfd 7y agoThat reminded me of Slatestarcodex excellent review of „Albion’s Seeds“: https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/27/book-review-albions-seed/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/27/book-review-albions-se...
- chrisfinne 7y agoThat is a great book review.
- jdietrich 7y agoNot mentioned in the article: The Scottish heroin epidemic started in Edinburgh, the more prosperous of Scotland's two largest cities. This was largely due to the presence of MacFarlan Smith, which was at one point the world's largest producer of pharmaceutical opiates. That initial cohort of heroin users in the 1980s predominantly used drugs that were diverted from the legitimate pharmaceutical supply rather than smuggled from abroad, which led to an unusually rapid increase in the user population and the illicit market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacFarlan_Smith https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacFarlan_Smith The majority of overdose deaths in Scotland involved multiple drugs; for reasons that are not entirely clear, Scottish addicts are particularly prone to concurrently use opiates, benzodiazepines and alcohol in an indiscriminate manner. This vastly increases the risk of overdose due to the cumulative and unpredictable respiratory depression induced by multiple drugs. http://www.sdf.org.uk/934-deaths-from-a-drug-overdose-in-scotland-in-2017/ http://www.sdf.org.uk/934-deaths-from-a-drug-overdose-in-sco...
- yostrovs 7y agoRedheads are known to have greater pain tolerance. Perhaps there's a relationship to that phenomenon here.
- thedudeabides5 7y agoWatch out @yostrovs, HN is not a safe space for humor attempts.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- yostrovs 7y agoThough I did find my comment amusing, I do believe there may be something to it. It is a fact that redheads have higher pain tolerance and respond differently to anesthesia compared to the rest of the population. Considering these phenomena are related to drug abuse, I feel like the downvoting is a matter of ignorance.
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- _Understated_ 7y agoMy late brother used to talk about an area outside Glasgow called Springburn and how it is consistently listed as one of the poorest/deprived places in Europe (not sure if that was the correct term but it gets the point across). Yet each election term they voted in either the same politicians or politicians with the same manifestos. Nothing will change!
- wallace_f 7y agoI think we deserve it. 70,000 yearly people die from Big Pharma's opioid crisis in the US, Jeff Bezos and his companies barely pay taxes and his newspapers run non-stop spam about how we should disarm the peasants because 20-100 per year die in mass shootings, and people actually agree with it. Face it, we're opiated masses of worthless idiots.
- anm89 7y agoThis is just a list of unrelated facts. Totally incoherent.
- otabdeveloper4 7y agoIt was crystal-clear to me. Maybe your judgement is clouded because of bias?
- krageon 7y agoThe bias that the only country that has regular large-scale shootings also makes it easy for it's citizens to buy guns! And then there were a bunch of other facts not at all related to guns that have no bearing on it, culminating in an ill-advised moralising conclusion that it (it being a lot of deaths and what I have to assume is bad policy) is deserved because of all those things.
- wallace_f 7y agoThe point was intended to be general, that average people are not rational, nor even moral, using an exceptionally lopsided comparison where reason and human life stands on one side, and emotion and propaganda on the other. Emotion and propaganda wins, obviously. Probably every generation in history looks back in time at every other generation and has no hesitation in coming to this conclusion. It is only with our current generation that our cognitive biases and emotional nature tell us to believe otherwise.
- matthewmacleod 7y agoThis is a particularly active political issue too – drug policy is at present a reserved matter of the UK government, which means the devolved government of Scotland is missing some important tools they could use to help deal with the issue. This something that the pro-independence Scottish government are making quite a bit of noise about now; some of it is probably opportunism, but Scotland's drug culture is different enough that it certainly seems to require different tools. In particular, there is pressure among some people for the introduction of safe drug consumption facilities, with the idea being that this keeps people off the street, with access to medical care, in the system, and with support to help them recover. These are currently prohibited in the UK. We'll see what happens over the next few years, of course. The current UK government is unlikely to be giving any concessions.
- shellac 7y agoThe UK used to prescribe heroin for addicts, which I understand inspired the Swiss treatment of addicts. Rolling that back as part of the war on addiction seems to have been counterproductive in terms of overall health.
- daedalus_f 7y agoI don't think direct heroin-assisted treatment has been commonplace in the UK for a long time. You need an individual license from the Home Office for diamorphine prescription [1], whereas the opiate replacement drugs can be prescribed by any medical prescriber (though in practice this tends to be only done by specialists and some GPs). [1] - https://www.gov.uk/guidance/controlled-drug-domestic-licences-for-doctors-how-to-apply https://www.gov.uk/guidance/controlled-drug-domestic-licence...
- kenneth 7y agoThe Swiss experiment was a massive disaster. Wish we had never done it, and it certainly took a few decades to clean up its effect on parts of Zürich. It attracted junkies from all over Europe and with it brought crime and violence. I spent a few years going to primary school near the epicenter of it in the late 90s. The number of times I saw people shooting up in broad daylight right in front of my school… is shocking. Even more shocking were the parks littered in used needles. Parks kids would play in… can you imagine what can happen? They'd be cleaned up on the regular, and staff would literally have bags full of used needles! It was pretty traumatic to see, not that I really understood it as a kid. It was way worse than the streets of San Francisco today, which are an absolute disaster too! Good riddance, getting rid of that "treatment" was the best thing we ever did.
- petepete 7y agoFor the record, I love Scotland and visit at least once per year. The North East coast is beautiful. For people outside the UK, I'd recommend tracking down a BBC documentary called The Scheme. It's quite old now (~2010) but still pretty relevant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scheme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scheme
- christoph 7y agoIt's all available on YouTube, although the quality isn't great, it's still watchable. It might be a struggle for people not used to Scottish accent though. Episode 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X6KfCYJx_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X6KfCYJx_g Episode 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgwELFu6Erw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgwELFu6Erw Episode 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9YV4aJ49SI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9YV4aJ49SI Episode 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bK0bleFCuI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bK0bleFCuI Episode 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E90kfvhSS7E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E90kfvhSS7E
- Teever 7y agoDoes anyone know what is going on with Estonia in that first graph? The first spike in deaths for Estonia seems to happen after the 2008 financial crisis, but I'm surprised to see that the dfinancial crisis hit Estonia harder than the US? What other facts give Estonia a surprisingly high mortality rate from opiates?
- lvoudour 7y agoApparently high numbers of fentanyl users (article from 2012 which more or less coincides with the big spike in the graph) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17524945 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17524945
- ocschwar 7y agoEasy access to opiates thanks to Russia.
- fulafel 7y agoGoogling some gdp graph tells you that Estonia's GDP dipped -14% in 2009 while some other countries featured in the article's drug graphs had it a lot easier (around -5% for Scotlan, Denmark, USA). Seems like the # of unemployed quintupled as well. Combined with the country's rather light social safety net and relatively low GDP to begin with it must have been pretty nasty.
- ocschwar 7y agoA lot of young Estonians went west to make money to send home, and that money counts towards GDP in France/England et cetera, not Estonia, even though it then was sent home. Meanwhile, they were not home to add to the public health statistics, while those who couldn't do that stayed behind, including those who fell into opiate addiction. So the stats make the Estonian situation look more miserable than it was. (Which is plenty miserable, mind.)
- adventured 7y ago> A lot of young Estonians went west to make money to send home, and that money counts towards GDP in France/England et cetera, not Estonia, even though it then was sent home. If that money was sent home to Estonia, then it is getting measured in the impact it has on GDP. It shows up in, for one example, household consumption data. Jane takes remittance money, goes into a shop in Tallinn, makes a purchase. Now that's part of GDP. Jane pays her rent with remittance money, now that's part of GDP. That's exactly how it should work. Further, those remittances are a small minority share of all generated production by that person - leftover savings (which can then be shifted) after expenses necessary for existing in France/England. Mexico as one famous example often leads the world in remittance figures, money coming from the US ($20-$30 billion per year). The impact of that remittance money shows up directly in the measured GDP figures of Mexico. It's still only 2% of the Mexico economy each year however. If you look at Estonia's remittance numbers, you see a modest increase after the great recession. That increase difference would be a trivial share of their economic results, 0.3% or so. Total annual remittances today are higher now than they were in 2010-2013. Back then it was typically 200m-300m euro annually, or roughly 1% of GDP (nowhere near meaningfully denting the 14% decline figure referenced by the parent).
- spoovy 7y ago"The reasons behind Scotland’s drug crisis are varied: Economic policies left areas deeply impoverished." Glasgow was in decline in the 70s mainly because of global economic tides and the movement of manufacturing jobs from west to east, not because the subsequent government attempts to deal with the issue had limited success. You see this "blaming the imperfect treatment instead of the illness" in these kind of trendy PC journals constantly it's infuriating.
- billfruit 7y agoI do feel that the book had the effect of popularizing the insinuation that trainspotting is a futile, otiose pursuit, where as for many people it is a pleasearuble, fulfilling hobby with some of the same evocations that birdwatching does.
- chrisseaton 7y agoDo you mean heroin is a fufilling hobby? 'Trainspotting' is a euphemism for taking heroin. The novel and the film don't have anything to do with literally spotting trains.
- billfruit 7y agoI meant the real trainspotting.
- ensmartha 7y agoMaybe there’s just no solution to the drug problem. We’ve tried everything already at great cost. Sometimes it’s better to admit a war is not winnable and to pull out before wasting more resources.
- sleavey 7y agoThere is a solution, but it involves the rich paying more tax to rebalance society and boost social mobility. We've not tried everything, we've just tried most of the things that don't involve rocking the boat.
- alkonaut 7y agoWho are “we”?
- tremon 7y agoWe’ve tried everything already at great cost Even if that's the case (I don't think it is), maybe we should try the things that cost a lot less? Maybe legalize it and tax the hell out of it? Cut out the illegal market by legalizing the sales and production channels? As a bonus, you will get much more accurate statistics about drug use, the effectiveness of countermeasures, and you get better quality control. We also haven't tried the most harsh but cost-effective solution: flood the market with 100% lethal knockoffs, consequences be damned. There are solutions to the drug problem, just like there are solutions to the alcohol problem. Going to war with a concept is just not one of those solutions.
- UglyToad 7y ago"We've" tried everything only in the sense we've consistently pandered to the regressive, dogmatic and poorly informed war-on-drugs brigade. Heroin is less dangerous than paracetamol (though much more highly addictive) and almost all the harms arise from reusing injection equipment, poly drug use, unknown strength or the drug being cut with crap: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/14/drugsandalcohol.socialsciences https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/20... So yes we should admit that the war is unwinnable but not as an admission of defeat but rather that we are finally doing the obvious thing and that regressive politicians and voters who have prolonged the phony war on drugs are never let near public health or criminal policy again.
- prestonbriggs 7y agoI remember the discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18766301 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18766301 Is this what growing up in those tenements leads to?