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Drug use: data introduction

The drug data section provides information on various aspects of drug use and is split in four parts:

  • Availability and prevalence – including information from drug offences & court proceedings, drug use in prisons, survey results and estimates of a study into prevalence of problem drug use.
  • Social harm – including drug-related crime, child protection cases and survey results.
  • Health harm - this includes information on hospital stays and deaths resulting from drug use, maternity & neonatal discharges, blood-borne viruses and primary care consultations relating to drug use.
  • Treatment for drug use - information on access to services, results from the Scottish Drug Misuse Database and prescribing of drug-replacement therapies.

Where information is available at sufficient geographic detail, data items are included as indicators in the Drugs Profile elsewhere on the ScotPHO website; see http://www.scotpho.org.uk/comparative-health/profiles/online-profiles-tool.

The table below summarises the dimensions / geographies data are presented at within the data pages and profiles section.

  Data presented?
(Y=yes; N=no)
Data dimensions/geographies Adults Children
By gender Y Y
By age group Y Y
By deprivation group N N
By NHS board area Y N
By Alcohol & Drugs Partnership (ADP) area  Y N
By council area Y N
By community health partnership (CHP) area N N
Time trend Y Y
National target Y N
Comparison with UK/GB N N
International comparison N N

Please note: If you require the most up-to-date data available, please check the data sources directly as new data may have been published since these data pages were last updated. Although we endeavour to ensure that the data pages are kept up-to-date, there may be a time lag between new data being published and the relevant ScotPHO web pages being updated.

Page last updated: 30 May 2023
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