The former chair of Scotland’s Drug Death Taskforce is to lead a new pharmacy group looking at how the profession can reduce drug-related harms and deaths in Scotland.

University of Stirling Professor of Substance Misuse, Catriona Matheson, and Johnathan Laird, the head of the Scottish-based training and information organisation, Pharmacy in Practice, are joining forces to establish the Scottish Pharmacy Alliance.

Its first task is to draw together specialists, practising pharmacists and leaders of the profession to examine whether pharmacy teams can do more to address the toll from drug use.

Community pharmacies alongside other frontline emergency services have spent the last year supporting the roll-out of naloxone – a medicine that can reverse the effects of an opiate overdose – following a successful pilot in Glasgow.

Last year, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in Scotland published a paper on the role the profession can take, making a series of recommendations around harm reduction, multidisciplinary team working, prescribing and training.

Professor Matheson, a pharmacist who was made a Fellow of the Society in recognition of her contribution to practice and drug research, has welcomed the Society’s strategy. She said the Scottish Pharmacy Alliance – which meets for the first time next month – will seek to build on the report and look at ways of delivering its recommendations:

"My work on the Drug Death Taskforce has encouraged me to see that there is genuine commitment to do the right thing by people from those working at the coalface as pharmacy staff do.  Pharmacists understand the importance of using an evidence-based approach because of their scientific training so they are an invaluable asset in the drive to reduce drug harm. 

“If the pharmacy profession can come together and demonstrate the leadership required hopefully other groups can do the same.”

Managing Director of Pharmacy in Practice, Johnathan Laird said:

"Occasionally there are societal problems that require citizens to act. I feel the issue of harmful drug use in this country is one such issue.

"One of the privileges of being a member of the pharmacist profession is that we can choose to intervene in the public interest.

"For decades pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and pharmacy teams across Scotland have cared deeply for the most vulnerable victims of harmful substance use. Many of us will have first-hand experience and understanding of the complex consequences on individuals and families of harmful drug use. Indeed, there is scarcely a pharmacy in the land that does not support people who struggle with substance use in a range of forms.”

Professor Matheson chaired the Scottish government Drug Death Taskforce from its establishment in 2019 until the end of last year. At that point, she and her deputy convener stood down citing concerns that the group was being asked by ministers to publish its findings before it had all the evidence it needed.

National Records of Scotland says that there were four and half times the number of drug-related deaths in 2020 compared with 2000. The 1,339 drug-related deaths registered in Scotland in 2020 was the largest number for a whole year since records began in 1996.

Read more: Call to expand overdose kits to community pharmacies; Pharmacy: Back us as ‘most accessible’ health teams; Pharmacy publishes 2030 vision

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