Drug-related Deaths in Scotland in 2014

Revised 15 March 2016
The following parts of this publication use estimates of the numbers of problem drug users for 2012/13 that are produced by the Information Services Division (ISD) of NHS National Services Scotland: Section 3.5; paragraphs 4.7 to 4.9; Tables 9, HB5 and C5; and Figures 2 and 3.
They were all revised on 15 March 2016 following ISD’s publication of revised versions of some of its estimates on 4 March 2016.
More information about the revision of ISD’s estimates is given in:

• ISD’s announcement, which is available in the Drug Misuse section of the ISD website;   and
• the relevant parts of ISD’s revised 'Estimating the Prevalence of Problem Drug Use in Scotland' publication (especially pages 27 to 29), which can be found in the publications section of the ISD website.

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With effect from the publication of Drug-related Deaths in Scotland in 2009, the standard basis for the National Records of Scotland figures for individual drugs for 2008 and subsequent years was changed to 'drugs which were implicated in, or which potentially contributed to, the cause of death'. Further information about this change is given in (e.g.) paragraph 1.3 and Section 2 of Drug-related Deaths in Scotland in 2009.

However, there is also some interest in statistics which cover all the drugs reported by a pathologist, including any 'which were present, but which were not considered to have had any direct contribution to this death'. Therefore, the extra tables that are available via the links below provide figures for individual drugs, for NHS Boards and councils for 2014, on this 'all drugs found present in the body' basis. These statistics are on the same basis as, and so may be compared with, the figures for 2008 which were published in Tables HB3 and C3 of Drug-related Deaths in Scotland in 2008 - except that NHS Board boundary changes mean that, in some cases, they are not directly comparable to what was published in previous years. It must also be remembered that these figures are not on the standard basis.

Statistical Service in Scotland

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