Courtesy of Jean Logan
Jean Logan, associate director of pharmacy community care services at NHS Forth Valley, will represent the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) in Scotland on a new Drug Deaths Taskforce.
Logan previously chaired the Scottish Specialist Pharmacists in Substance Misuse group. She is also a member of the NHS in Scotland’s Mental Health Pharmacy Strategy Group, and the Dundee Drug Misuse Commission.
The Drug Deaths Taskforce was established in July 2019 by Joe FitzPatrick, the Scottish minister for public health, sport and wellbeing, and chaired by Catriona Matheson, professor in substance use at the University of Stirling and a freelance consultant in drug dependence.
Speaking to The Pharmaceutical Journal
in early September 2019, Matheson said that the taskforce’s objective is to “to look at figures on drug deaths and try to coordinate an approach to bring those down”.
The taskforce includes representation from Police Scotland and the Crown Office, the Royal College of GPs and Community Justice Scotland, alongside Catherine Calderwood and Iona Colvin, Scotland’s chief medical officer and chief social work adviser, respectively.
Of the 26 group members, five have personal experience of the impact of drug dependency.
Scotland has the highest drug-related death rate in the EU — three times higher than the UK as a whole. In 2018, there were 1,187 drug-related deaths across the country, which represents an increase of 27% from 2017.
The Drug Deaths Taskforce held their first full meeting in Edinburgh on 17 September 2019.
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