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Almost 300 people died in Greater Manchester last year after taking drugs, new figures show.

But the figure was a five-year low for the region and bucks a national trend which saw the highest number of fatal drugs overdoses on record. Across England Wales 5,565 deaths registered in 2024 were related to drug poisoning.

That's up 2% on the year before and the highest drug death toll since records began in 1993. Here in Greater Manchester there were 298 drugs-related deaths, the lowest number since 2020 (245 deaths).

Manchester, which saw 71 drug poisoning deaths, had the highest number of fatal overdoses. That equates to a mortality rate of 15.3 deaths for every 100,000 people over the last three years, almost twice as high as the England average (8.8 deaths per 100,000 p

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