For a respected organisation like the Scottish Drugs Forum (SDF) to call on politicians to declare a public health emergency over drug deaths underlines the depth of the crisis.

SDF director Dave Liddell has revealed the number of fatalities could be more than 1,000 this year – up from last year’s figure of 934 deaths.

As Liddell points out, these are often preventable deaths – if drug users can be kept in treatment. But too many are discharged early, which the SDF believes has contributed to the ever-increasing number of deaths.

Meanwhile, the Scottish Government’s new drugs strategy has been delayed several times. The Road To Recovery, as the strategy is known, was first launched in 2008, when the number of drugs deaths was half what it was last year.

Hundreds of millions of pounds has been thrown at the problem, but the number of drug-related deaths still rises. Radical change is needed and the SDF has also rightly called for a review of services and a new target of zero fatalities to be set in the new strategy.

SDF director Dave Liddell said this week that if almost 1,000 people died on the roads, there would be an outcry. When he puts it like that, declaring a public health emergency does not seem like an unreasonable step.

Liddell and his staff are experts in the field of drugs policy and their conference on Thursday will set out what they see as the solution to the crisis. Politicians would do well to act on their suggestions.