As per the recent reports, deaths due to drugs in Northern Ireland are more than doubled compared to the past ten years, and almost all the deaths have some link with heroin and morphine rising, as per certain reports.
The latest figures from the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency recorded some 218 deaths, and they all related to the drugs in the year 2020- up from 191 the year before and from 92 deaths reported in 2010.
And from those 218 deaths, it is reported that most of them were males, and more than half were between the age group of 25-44.
Two-thirds of all the deaths involved two or more drugs.
Nearly 133 cases in 2020 had an opioid mentioned on the death certificate, with heroin and morphine. This is the most usual and ordinary and connected to 55 deaths- more than 46 in 2019 and the highest number on record.
Diazepam and pregabalin have also been featured heavily, and more than 23 % of deaths were reported due to Diazepam.
The drug ‘Pregabalin’ is often sold under the brand name Lyrica, and they are also helpful for the conditions like epilepsy, anxiety and nerve pain.
However, its abuse has been widely documented, and it first started appearing in statistics around drug-related deaths in Northern Ireland in 2013.
The total number of deaths where pregabalin (it is also sold under the brand name Lyrica), and it is a factor that increased nine in 2016 to a peak of 77 in 2019. However, it also reduced slightly to 70 in the year 2020.
The deaths that have been reported due to cocaine has remained stable since 2019 (36 in 2020), but the percentile of cases where it is mentioned on the death certificate has actually gone down from a peak of 19.4 percent in 2019, to 16.5 percent in 2020.
They also reported that the drug-related deaths are increased, but deaths due to alcohol have faced a downfall, and it went down to 14.7 percent in 2020, having more than split the 2012 peak of 31.8%.
The statistics also indicate that the deaths increased, and the major reason is poverty across Northern Ireland.
