The number of drug-related deaths in Enfield rose 200% in the space of 12 months, according to the latest data from the Office of National Statistics.
This increase from 11 in 2023 to 33 in 2024 sets Enfield as the worst-affected borough in outer London with the greatest increase and the highest number of deaths due to drugs.
The number of drug related deaths in Enfield accounts for 9.6% of all drug related deaths in outer London which is 343.
The borough with the second-highest number of drug related deaths in outer London was Hillingdon with 30 deaths, which is exactly double to the year before.
While the overall picture in London is bad, Enfield stands out as one of the worst affected.
Despite the implementation of the Psychoactive Substances Act in 2016, there remains to be a growing issue of new and unidentifiable drugs entering the market.
John Turner, professor of addiction and psychology at the University of East London, said: “The unknown world of illicit drug taking has become more unknown than it’s ever been before.”
Turner added there are complex changes which have taken place in the drugs market over the last 10 to 15 years.
He said: “What is happening increasingly now is because these novel psychoactive substances are so much easier and cheaper to manufacture than buying in drugs like cocaine, those drugs are being marketed towards customers as what they are not.
“People are buying what they think to be cocaine, but it might actually contain another drug that acts like cocaine but is often much stronger.
“These drugs are much more powerful. They enter the central nervous system much more quickly and they occupy sites on brain cells much more efficiently so that means that you need to take less of a drug such as fentanyl to get the same effect that you would with heroin.”
Turner linked the rise in overdoses to the increase in laced drugs with synthetic opioids.
He said: “We have seen an increase in overdoses, with synthetic opioids appearing a lot as people do not realise they are taking too much.”
Further problems with the drugs market are often linked to a system which is not set up to deal with the ever-unfolding problem.
Due to the frequency of new drugs entering the market, there is now a situation where hospitals and law enforcement do not know what drugs they are dealing with.
Turner said: “Our system at the moment is not very well deigned to detect these synthetic substances.
“We know that people are overdosing on substances and that they don’t know what the substance is and increasingly hospitals and law enforcement don’t know what the drug is either.”
Addiction and drug use is commonly linked to experiences of trauma or distress.
Turner said: “For the majority of people who develop more significant problems with substance use it tends to be predated by something that causes distress in that person’s life.
“It may be that someone has a history of depressive illness, or they have experienced trauma in early life, or they live in a particularly deprived part of the country.”
Further data shows Enfield is one of the 10 London boroughs which have poverty rates higher than the London average of 26%.
In 2023/2024, Enfield had a poverty rate of 32%, making it 6% higher than the average.
In 2025, it also ranked as the sixth-highest local authority district in England with 37.7% of the population living in income deprived households.
Turner said: “When we look at drug addiction, we are very often looking at people who have suffered some kind of adversity.
Estimates vary depending on the kind of drug it can be anything from 70-75% of people that are addicted to alcohol have pre-existing trauma of distress, and that goes up to closer to 90 when it comes to opiates like heroin.
Often, substance abuse as a result of deprivation is used as a means to feel better, more relaxed or just simply less sad.
Ultimately, the causes of addiction lie in the psychological and social factors a person has been exposed to.
A spokesperson from Enfield council said: “We can see that relative poverty has risen significantly when we compare the Indices of Multiple Deprivation 2019 to the newly released 2025.”
They acknowledged a link to the increase in poverty to the increase in drug related deaths in the area.
Feature image by Christina Victoria Craft from Unsplash
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