The pretty little UK seaside town being torn apart by ‘losing too many young people’

Oban, a pretty town on the west coast of Scotland, was named last year – and on its surface, epitomises the community spirit and local pride you’d expect from a tight-knit rural hamlet.

Delve deeper, however, and it represents a microcosm of in more ways than one, with a high number of drug-related deaths among its young population leaving local families devastated.

Oban was named Scotland’s town of the year in 2024 by the Scotland Loves Local initiative for its “vibrant” cultural scene and community ethos. But in the last year-and-a-half alone, eight deaths have been linked to drug misuse, according to the , hinting at a dark underbelly to the picturesque coastal settlement.

“We’re losing far too many young people,” Jayne Donn, who lost her 29-year-old son James in December 2022, told the broadcaster.

Despite being a lively, mischevious child, James had become “mixed up, angry and lost” in his adulthood and began to take cannabis after struggling with dyslexia and his mental health, his mother said.

James’ best friend also died of an overdose at 30 and is buried beside him, she added, alongside “at least 10 others” she can think of in the town’s hillside graveyard.

The story is similar for Lisa McCuish, also buried in Oban after dying of an overdose in September 2022, at 42-years-old.

She began buying the anxiety and seizure medication diazepam off the streets after being prescribed it by a doctor, her sister Tanya said, before switching to heroin.

“These are vulnerable adults who are unable to protect themselves from danger or harm,” Tanya added. “Why is more not being done?”

Scotland has been the worst place in Europe for drug-related deaths for years, with the number rising by 12% in 2023, spurring the Scottish Government to open the UK’s in Glasgow last month.

The facility, which is a safe space for users to come and inject themselves with illegal substances under medical supervision, followed NHS reports that up to 500 people were taking drugs including heroin and cocaine in the city “on a regular basis”.

While the Thistle Centre – among 100 of its kind in the world – may be helping to stem drug-related deaths in Scotland’s biggest city, residents of Oban are afraid that fatalities are continuing to rise in rural regions, with little being done to stem the tide.

Scottish Health Secretary Neil Gray said the facility was part of the Government’s “national mission” to tackle deaths caused by drug misuse, adding that was “about making sure people are able to, in a stigma free way, access services and support”.

He acknowledged that there was “more to be done” to support addicts in rural parts of the country, telling the that he was working to increase access to facilities and services in Scotland’s remote countryside and island communities.