FOI/2021/2681
You asked
Please supply information about the amount of children under 5 that have passed away with a class A drug in their blood stream within the last 5 years and how many of those are from the west midlands.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
The latest publication available can be accessed via the following link: Deaths related to drug poisoning, England and Wales 2020. Data is available from 1993 to 2020.
We are unable to provide any further disaggregation of this data involving the lowest age ranges due to the small numbers involved as it would be considered personal information. Section 39 of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 (SRSA) renders it an offence to disclose information held by the Statistics Board for statistical purposes that would identify an individual or a body corporate. As we are prohibited by law from publishing statistics in which individual businesses or persons can be identified, we find that Section 44 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) applies. Section 44 is an absolute exemption and no consideration of the public interest test needs to be applied.