#Bristol's Drug Crisis: We're Spending £57,000 Per Year on Failure Because Success Doesn't Look "Tough."
55 people died in Bristol in 2024. Treatment costs £25,000 and works. Prison costs £57,000 and fails. So why are we choosing expensive failure over cheaper success?
11-minute read | Bristol, UK | November 2025
Primary data: Bristol Post, November 2025 | ONS Drug Poisoning Statistics 2024
Fifty-five people died from drug poisoning in Bristol in 2024. The same number as 2022. Fifty-nine in 2023. The numbers aren’t dropping – they’re stuck at the second-highest levels on record.
Bristol’s drug death rate – 12.5 deaths per 100,000 people – is 42% higher than the England average of 8.8. National drug deaths reached 5,565 in 2024, the highest since records began in 1993.
And a new threat has emerged: nitazenes, synthetic opioids many times more potent than heroin. Twenty-two people died in the South West in just 11 months. A Bristol expert warned we’re “on the verge of a public health crisis.”
Meanwhile, Bristol City Council cut drug and alcohol treatment funding by £1 million.
This isn’t incompetence. This is a choice. And it’s costing us billions.
Bristol’s Problem: The Numbers Nobody Wants to Talk About.
Bristol has 4,940 people using opiates and crack cocaine. That’s not a statistic – that’s enough people to fill a concert venue. It’s the second-highest rate among England’s core cities, first in the nation for crack cocaine use, eighth for heroin.
Where do these people come from? Over 80% of injecting drug users experienced childhood trauma. We failed to protect them when they were vulnerable children. Now they’re adults with addictions, and suddenly everyone asks: “Why don’t they just stop?”
When did we stop caring? At eighteen? Twenty-one? Was there a birthday where society decided they went from “vulnerable child we must protect” to “junkie scum who made bad choices”?
The £13.5 Billion Theft Economy.
When you need £15,000 to £30,000 per year to fund an addiction and you can’t work, where does that money come from?
Half of all acquisitive crime in England is drug-related. Stolen goods worth £2 to £2.5 billion change hands annually. Sixty-two per cent of people convicted of theft in 2020 had prior drug offences. Forty-seven per cent of robbery convictions involved people with drug histories.
Here’s the part nobody mentions: this crime concentrates in the poorest areas. Other desperate people are burgling people who can least afford to be burgled, whilst drug dealers count their money.
Drug-related crime costs England and Wales £13.5 billion every year.
And our solution? Send them to prison.
HM Prison Bristol: Your £57,000 at Work
Let’s talk about what £57,000 per prisoner per year actually buys you.
HM Prison Bristol is 33% overcrowded above its safe capacity. Prisoners spend 22 hours a day locked in cramped, squalid cells. Between 2019 and 2023, eight people killed themselves. One prisoner was murdered by his cellmate. Half the population can’t read.
Drugs? Easier to get inside than outside. Drones drop packages directly to cells.
Rehabilitation? The HM Inspectorate of Prisons described Bristol as “categorically failing” at that.
Twenty-five per cent are released homeless.
Reoffending rates: 45% overall. 61% for short sentences.
So we spend £57,000 per year to lock people in cells where they learn nothing, get more addicted, and commit more crimes when we release them onto the street with nowhere to live.
At least it looks tough, though.
What Actually Works (And Costs Half as Much)
The evidence isn’t in dispute. We know what works. We’ve known for decades.
Bristol has 1,800 people on opioid substitution therapy – mainly methadone. This isn’t controversial. It’s evidence-based treatment that reduces deaths and saves money.
The Economics: Treatment vs Prison.
Prison:
Annual cost per person: £57,000
Reoffending rate for short sentences: 61%
Prisoners released homeless: 25%
Rehabilitation success: “Categorically failing” (HM Inspectorate)
Drug Treatment:
Annual cost per person: Less than £25,000
Reoffending rate: 19 percentage points lower than that of the untreated
Annual societal cost per person: £29,282
Saving per person per year: £19,264
No Treatment:
Annual cost to government: £0 (they just commit crimes instead)
Annual societal cost per person: £48,546
Reoffending rate: Highest
Outcome: People die, communities suffer, the cycle continues
The numbers: Someone not in treatment costs society £48,546 per year. In treatment? £29,282. That’s a saving of £19,264 per person annually.
Naloxone: 73 Lives Saved for Pennies.
Naloxone costs pennies and reverses opioid overdoses instantly. In 2019, Bristol Drugs Project supplied 909 doses. Seventy-three lives were saved that year. We know this because one in twelve people who came back for replacements had used it to save someone’s life.
A charity saved 73 lives in one year with medication that costs less than a pint.
Think about that whilst we spend £57,000 per year imprisoning people.
What the Evidence Says Works.
Safe injection facilities reduce overdose deaths. The evidence is overwhelming. Glasgow opened one despite Westminster opposition. Cost in Bristol: £800,000 to £1 million per year. That’s the same as imprisoning 18 people who’ll reoffend anyway.
Drug testing prevents deaths from contaminated substances. Bristol was the first UK city to allow it outside festivals. Most drug deaths aren’t from the drugs themselves – they’re from not knowing what you’re taking.
Drug rehabilitation: Less than £25,000 per person.
Prison: £57,000 per person.
Prison reoffending rate: 61% for short sentences.
Treatment reoffending rate: 19 percentage points lower.
The maths isn’t complicated.
The Economic Case That Should End the Argument.
Every £1 spent on drug treatment saves £4 in reduced health, prison, law enforcement, and emergency service costs.
That’s not activist talking points. That’s the government’s own Dame Carol Black Review. A 400% return on investment.
The combined benefits of drug and alcohol treatment: £2.4 billion in savings every year.
The Conservative Calculation.
England has 300,000 opiate and crack users. Fund treatment for just half:
Investment: 150,000 people × £25,000 = £3.75 billion
Return at proven 4:1 ratio: £15 billion in savings
Plus:
Massive reduction in the £13.5 billion annual crime costs
Fewer people in expensive prison places
Reduced emergency service demand
Saved lives
Break even in year one. Save billions annually from year two onwards.
We have the evidence. We have the programmes. We have the economic case that makes this a no-brainer for anyone with a calculator.
Portugal Made a Different Choice.
In 2001, Portugal decriminalised drugs and invested in treatment. Now they rank 27th out of 29 European countries for drug deaths.
The UK ranks 4th.
Portugal treats addiction as a health issue. They save millions. They have lower drug use than the UK.
The evidence from every country that prioritised treatment over punishment is overwhelming: it works, it’s cheaper, and it saves lives.
But it doesn’t look tough enough for British headlines.
So, Why Isn’t Bristol Doing This? A Look at Council Priorities.
By this point, you’re probably asking the obvious question: if the evidence is this strong, the economics this clear, and the solutions this proven, why isn’t Bristol implementing them?
The answer isn’t incompetence. It’s politics. And it reveals something deeply uncomfortable about progressive virtue signalling.
Bristol has a Green-led council. They campaign as the progressive party, the evidence-based party, the party that cares about the vulnerable, the marginalised, the voiceless.
But here’s the thing: addicts and homeless people don’t generally vote. They don’t show up to council consultations. They don’t write letters to councillors. They don’t form organised lobby groups.
So let’s look at what actually gets prioritised when a “progressive” council has to choose between policies that help the truly voiceless and policies that please their electoral base.
The Virtue Signalling Paradox.
Green councils are brilliant at virtue signalling about marginalised groups. Climate justice. Social justice. Environmental justice.
But when it comes to the ACTUALLY marginalised – the people living with addiction, sleeping rough, caught in the cycle of crime and prison – those people don’t get cycle lanes named after them. They get their treatment funding cut.
Because here’s the brutal truth: society’s most voiceless and marginalised people – those who have every legal right to be here, every right to help, every right to be heard – don’t matter in the political calculation.
They don’t vote.
They don’t campaign.
They don’t turn out to council meetings about Low Traffic Neighbourhoods.
They’re busy trying to survive.
So, politicians make a perfectly rational choice: prioritise the policies that benefit the people who do vote, who do engage, and who do reward you electorally.
What Bristol Greens Have Actually Funded and Advocated For.
The Green Party has proposed and secured:
£8.75 million over five years for cycling and walking infrastructure
£800,000 for Low Traffic Neighbourhood plans
Years of advocacy for Workplace Parking Levy schemes
Expansion of Clean Air Zones
These aren’t inherently bad policies. Some of them have merit.
But let’s put this in context.
The Comparison Nobody Wants to Make.
What Bristol Green Council Has Prioritised:
Cycling and walking infrastructure: £8.75 million over five years
Low Traffic Neighbourhood plans: £800,000 secured
Workplace Parking Levy: Years of advocacy and committee work
Clean Air Zones: Active expansion
Meanwhile, the drug crisis:
Treatment funding: Cut by £1 million
People who died in 2024: 55
People who died in 2023: 59
Bristol’s death rate vs national average: 42% higher
People using heroin and crack in Bristol: 4,940
Return on investment for treatment: 400% (£4 saved for every £1 spent)
New deadly threat (nitazenes): 22 deaths in the South West in 11 months
Fifty-five people died in Bristol in 2024. Fifty-nine in 2023. The numbers aren’t dropping.
Bristol’s drug death rate is 42% higher than the national average.
Nitazenes killed 22 people in the South West in 11 months.
And the Green council secured £800k for traffic schemes whilst treatment funding was cut by £1 million.
Why Transport Over Treatment?
It’s not complicated. It’s politics.
Transport schemes:
Look progressive
Photograph well (high-vis jacket, thumbs up!)
Popular with middle-class Green voters
Win elections in affluent wards
Nobody has to confront uncomfortable truths
Low political risk
Drug treatment:
Doesn’t photograph well (methadone clinics, naloxone training)
Requires admitting the War on Drugs failed
Requires explaining why you’re spending money on “junkies”
Deal with NIMBYs who love helping drug users in theory but don’t want facilities near them
High political risk (Daily Mail: “Soft on crime!”)
So they choose expensive failure (prison at £57,000) over cheaper success (treatment at £25,000) because one looks like being tough, and the other looks like being soft.
Never mind that the “tough” option doesn’t work. Never mind that it costs twice as much. Never mind that it creates more victims when people reoffend.
It photographs better.
The Class Divide Nobody Mentions.
Low Traffic Neighbourhoods are brilliant if you:
Already live in a nice area
Own a bike
Work from home or nearby
Can afford the house price premium
They’re less brilliant if you:
Drive for work
Have mobility issues
Live on the boundary where traffic got displaced
Can’t afford to live in areas that get them
But here’s what’s really happening: Green councils are implementing policies that primarily benefit comfortable middle-class voters whilst cutting funding for programmes that would save working-class lives.
The poorest areas suffer the most drug-related crime (£13.5 billion annually). Those same areas get asked to pay Clean Air Zone charges, whilst the areas getting Low Traffic Neighbourhoods see property values rise.
It’s gentrification with a green badge.
The system is working exactly as designed.
The choice to prioritise transport infrastructure over drug treatment isn’t random. It’s not even immoral by the standards of electoral politics.
It’s entirely logical.
Transport schemes:
Benefit people who vote
Look progressive
Photograph well
Generate positive media coverage
Win elections in middle-class wards
Nobody has to confront uncomfortable truths about societal failure
Drug treatment:
Benefits people who largely don’t vote
Requires admitting the War on Drugs failed
Requires explaining why you’re “spending money on junkies”
Generates Daily Mail headlines about being “soft on crime”
Requires dealing with NIMBYs who love vulnerable people in theory but don’t want services near them
Forces uncomfortable conversations about childhood trauma and systemic failure
The political calculation is entirely rational. The people who need drug treatment the most have the least political power. They’re society’s most marginalised – and not in the fashionable, virtue-signal-friendly way.
They’re not a demographic you can rally around. They’re not photogenic. Their survival doesn’t generate positive media coverage or electoral rewards.
Who Actually Gets to Be “Vulnerable.”
Progressive councils talk endlessly about the “vulnerable” and the “marginalised.”
But watch what they actually fund, and you see who REALLY counts as vulnerable:
Vulnerable enough to matter:
Middle-class cyclists who want safer routes
Homeowners in nice areas who want Low Traffic Neighbourhoods
Professionals who want Workplace Parking Levies to fund their commutes
People who turn up to consultations and write articulate letters
Not vulnerable enough to matter:
People with addiction are sleeping rough
People committing acquisitive crime to fund habits
People cycling through prison and homelessness
People whose childhood trauma society failed to address
The 80% of injecting drug users who experienced childhood trauma
The 4,940 people using heroin and crack cocaine in Bristol
The first group votes. The second group doesn’t.
The first group has a voice in the system. The second group IS voiceless.
And that’s not an accident. That’s not a bug. That’s the feature.
The Uncomfortable Truth About “Voice.”
Green councils love talking about “giving voice to the marginalised.” However, they refer to the marginalised who can articulate their concerns in ways that align with progressive narratives.
The ACTUALLY voiceless – the people so failed by the system they’re past the point of engaging with it – don’t get a platform at council meetings. They’re not writing op-eds. They’re not forming community action groups.
They’re dying. Fifty-five of them in Bristol in 2024.
And those deaths don’t generate the same political pressure as a well-organised campaign for better cycling infrastructure, because dead addicts don’t vote and their families are often too traumatised and stigmatised to campaign effectively.
It’s Not Just the Greens – It’s the Entire System.
This isn’t unique to Bristol’s Green council. Labour councils make the same choices. Conservative councils make the same choices. LibDem councils make the same choices.
Every council in Britain prioritises policies that benefit people with political power over policies that would save people without it.
But it’s more glaring when it’s a party that explicitly campaigns on caring about the vulnerable, the marginalised, the voiceless.
Because it reveals the truth: when politicians say “vulnerable,” they mean “vulnerable people who vote for us.”
When they say “voiceless,” they mean “people whose voice we can amplify for political benefit.”
The ACTUALLY voiceless – the people so failed by every system that they’re outside all systems – don’t count in that calculation.
Over 80% of injecting drug users experienced childhood trauma. Society failed them as children. We’re failing them again as adults.
But this time, we’re failing them whilst congratulating ourselves for being progressive.
Both Can Matter – But Choices Reveal Priorities.
Transport and drug policy aren’t mutually exclusive. Bristol could fund both properly with different political choices.
But when you’ve got a limited budget, limited political capital, and explicit choices to make, what you prioritise reveals what you actually value.
Bristol’s Green council has prioritised:
Transport infrastructure (£8.75m over 5 years) over drug treatment (cut by £1m)
Policies that photograph well over programmes with 400% ROI
Electoral comfort over evidence-based lifesaving
This isn’t unique to Bristol or to the Green Party. It’s how British politics works. But it helps explain why 55 people died in 2024 despite us having all the evidence and tools we need to prevent it.
The choice between looking progressive and being effective is the choice most councils make. Bristol’s Green council is just one example of a much wider problem.
But understanding that systemic problem doesn’t make the 55 deaths any less preventable, or the political choices any less consequential.
What Bristol Could Actually Do Tomorrow.
Immediate Actions
Restore the £1 million in treatment funding that’s been cut. Then expand based on the proven 4:1 return. This should be the FIRST priority, not an afterthought.
Make naloxone available everywhere like defibrillators. Seventy-three lives saved by one charity in one year shows what’s possible at scale.
Expand drug testing beyond festivals. Let people know what they’re taking before nitazenes kill them.
Scale up opioid substitution programmes. Build on the 1,800 already in treatment. We know it works – do more of it.
Stop releasing 25% of prisoners to homelessness. You can’t rehabilitate someone who has nowhere to live.
Systemic Changes.
Implement safe injection facilities. Follow Glasgow’s lead. £800k-£1m prevents deaths and connects people to treatment. That’s the same amount secured for LTN plans.
Reform HM Prison Bristol urgently. It’s rated one of the most unsafe prisons in the country and costs £57,000 per person to fail.
Address childhood trauma. It affects 80% of injecting drug users. You can’t punish away trauma. You treat it.
Integrate services. People need housing, mental health support, AND addiction treatment together, not separately or sequentially.
Follow international evidence with the same enthusiasm you follow Dutch cycling infrastructure. Portugal and Switzerland have decades of evidence that treatment-focused approaches are effective.
The Question We’re Avoiding.
We’re already paying £22 billion per year for the consequences of not treating addiction properly.
The question isn’t “Can we afford treatment?”
We’re demonstrably spending far more on failure than success would cost.
The real question is: Do we have the political courage to choose evidence over ideology, investment over waste, and life over death?
Or do we just want to look progressive whilst people keep dying?
Because right now, Bristol’s Green council has made its choice clear.
They chose transport schemes that benefit the comfortable.
They chose policies that photograph well.
They chose middle-class votes over working-class lives.
Every day this choice continues, more people die. More families are destroyed. More communities suffer. More billions are thrown at expensive solutions that don’t work, whilst cheaper solutions that do work are dismissed as politically inconvenient.
Bristol has the evidence. We have the solutions. We have the economic case.
What we don’t have is politicians willing to do what works instead of what looks good.
Fifty-five people died in Bristol in 2024. They can’t tell you how that worked out for them.
Four thousand nine hundred and forty people in Bristol are still here. They’re still someone’s child, parent, or partner.
The question is: will we help them, or will we wait for them to become statistics too?
Take Action.
If You Need Help Now
Bristol Drugs Project: 0117 987 6000 | info@bdp.org.uk
11 Brunswick Square, Bristol BS2 8PE
FRANK (National Drug Helpline): 0300 123 6600
Samaritans (24/7 support): 116 123
Turning Point: 0300 303 8877
Make Your Voice Heard to Bristol Green Councillors.
Ask them directly: Why is cycling infrastructure prioritised over drug treatment when treatment has a proven 400% ROI and 55 people died in 2024?
Find your councillor: bristol.gov.uk/council-and-mayor/councillors
Bristol Green Party:
Email: contact@bristolgreenparty.org.uk
Twitter/X: @BristolGreenPty
Write to council budget committees about restoring and expanding drug treatment funding based on proven economic returns.
Support the Organisations Actually Saving Lives.
Bristol Drugs Project: bdp.org.uk
Transform Drug Policy Foundation (Bristol-based): transformdrugs.org
Anyone’s Child (families affected by drug deaths): anyoneschild.org
Share This Article!
Use #BristolDrugCrisis #TreatmentNotPrison #EvidenceBasedPolicy
Tag Bristol Green Party and demand they respond to the evidence.
Sources and References.
Primary Data Sources:
Bristol Post, November 2025: “Drug deaths reach second-highest record” (ONS drug poisoning statistics 2024)
Dame Carol Black Review (GOV.UK, 2021): “Review of drugs part two: prevention, treatment, and recovery”
HM Inspectorate of Prisons (October 2023): “Bristol prison remains one of the most unsafe in the country”
Bristol Green Party Policy Sources:
Bristol Green Party manifesto (April 2024)
Bright Green (March 2023): “How Green Councillors improved Bristol City Council’s budget”
Bristol247 (February 2020): Green Party budget proposals
Bristol Green Party (September 2024): Transport committee measures
Additional Sources:
Bristol Drugs Project (2020): ONS statistics analysis and naloxone programme data
University of Bristol PolicyBristol: “Drugs in the South West”
Bristol Green Party (September 2024): “We must face up to Bristol’s drug problem with bold solutions”
GOV.UK (July 2022): “Drive to get offenders drug-free and cut crime”
Public Health England (2018): “Why invest in drug and alcohol treatment”
The Spectator (May 2025): UK prisons crisis analysis
University of Bristol Social Harm and Crime Research Group (2024): Prison overcrowding research
DrugWise: Drug-related crime statistics
Tony Blair Institute (2022): “Two Sides of the Same Coin: Link Between Drug Markets and Violence”
All statistics are verifiable from official government publications, academic research, and local reporting.