You asked
Please could you provide the following information:
(a) Arrests made from disorderly behaviour due to the drug known as 'Spice'
(b) The death rate that has been a result of consuming the drug known as 'Spice'
(c) The admissions into hospitals of persons due to the consumption of the drug known as 'Spice'
(d) The amount of attacks that have been a result of the drug known as 'Spice'
We said
Thank you for your request.
We only hold information in relation to question (b), deaths related to the drug, 'spice.' In our data, it is more likely that spice will be recorded as a 'synthetic cannabinoid.' The number of deaths in England and Wales where a synthetic cannabinoid was mentioned on the death certificate can be found in Table 2 here:
Further information on deaths related to drugs, including mentions of 'spice,' along with other special extracts and tabulations of mortality data for England and Wales are available to order (subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs, where appropriate). Such enquiries should be made to: mortality@ons.gov.uk. We recommend that you contact the Mortality Analysis team directly in order to discuss your data requirements in more detail.
As this information can be provided via this route, we consider that s.21(1) applies to this request and the information does not have to be supplied under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act. S.21(1) is an absolute exemption and no consideration of the public interest test needs to be applied.
For data on hospital admissions, question (c), we recommend that you contact NHS Digital.
The Home Office may be able to provide further assistance with questions (a) and (d). The Home Office publish data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) about “new psychoactive substances” in Drug misuse: findings from the 2017 to 2018 CSEW, but this only relates to drug use. The relevant team can be contacted at CrimeandPoliceStats@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk.