NICOLA Sturgeon has sacked Joe FitzPatrick as Public Health Minister, following fierce criticism over Scotland’s drug death crisis. The SNP minister had been under pressure after the National Records of Scotland revealed that 1264 people had died drug-related deaths in Scotland in 2019, up 6% on the previous year. According to the NRS our drug-death rate was higher than those reported for all the EU countries and was approximately three and a half times that of the UK as a whole. Scottish Labour and the LibDems were set to push for a vote of no confidence. They said the minister had already lost the support of frontline drug workers.