Main Points

The main findings from this report include the following:

Using the annual average for 2012-2016, to reduce the effect on the figures of year-to-year fluctuations:

However, there is a narrower (in percentage terms) range of values when death rates are calculated using the estimated numbers of problem drug users (paragraph 4.9).

Comparing the annual average for 2012-2016 with that for 2002-2006:

The standard basis for the figures for individual drugs for 2008 and subsequent years is ‘drugs which were implicated in, or which potentially contributed to, the cause of death’. Of the 867 drug-related deaths in 2016:

(The percentages add up to more than 100 because more than one drug was implicated in, or contributed to, many of the deaths.)

In 2016, heroin and/or morphine were implicated in, or potentially contributed to, more deaths than in any previous year (hitherto, the largest figure had been 345 in 2015). The number for methadone was also above its previous peak (275 in 2011), as was the case for opiates or opioids (including heroin/morphine and methadone) as a group (previous highest figure 606 in 2015) and for benzodiazepines as a group (previous highest levels of 196 in 2012, and - on the basis used before 2008 - 245 in 2002) (paragraph 3.3.4).

Most drug-related deaths are of people who took more than one substance. Of the 867 drug-related deaths in 2016, there were just 66 for which only one drug (and, perhaps, alcohol) was found to be present in the body. There were 187 cases where only one drug (and, perhaps, alcohol) was believed to have been implicated in, or potentially contributed to, the cause of the death. The latter figure covers both the ‘only one drug found’ deaths and cases where one drug was implicated and the other drugs present were not considered to have had any direct contribution to the death (paragraph 3.3.9 to 3.3.11)

Annex E of this publication provides information about deaths which involved so-called ‘New Psychoactive Substances’ (NPSs). The definition used for the purpose of those figures is set out in first half of that Annex. On that basis, in 2016:

Figure 1: Drug-related deaths in Scotland, 3- and 5-year moving averages, and likely range of values around 5-year moving average

Graph showing Drug-related deaths in Scotland, 3- and 5-year moving averages, and
likely range of values around 5-year moving average