Drug related deaths

You asked

I am writing to make an open government request for all the information to which I am entitled under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Please send me:

1. How many drug related deaths have there been in the UK in the last 10 years?

2. How many drug related deaths have there been in the UK in the last 10 years relating specifically to opiates?

3. How many drug related deaths have there been in the Midlands (specifically Lincolnshire if information held) in the last 10 years relating specifically to opiates?

We said

Data on deaths related to drug poisoning in England and Wales are published annually on the Office for National Statistics website.

Data are available for deaths registered between 1993 and 2013. The downloadable reference tables give a number of breakdowns including figures for deaths related to drug poisoning and drug misuse for each year and the number of deaths that mention specific substances for each year. Figures are not published for opiates as a broad category but are available for specific opiates such as heroin/morphine, methadone and tramodol - these are available in tables 6a - 6c.

Data on deaths related to drug misuse by local authority for the years 2005 to 2013 is available to download.

Please note that the Office for National Statistics only holds data on deaths occurring in England and Wales.
Figures for Scotland can be obtained from the National Records of Scotland.
Figures for Northern Ireland can be obtained from the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency:

If these datasets mentioned above do not meet your requirements 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 is already available to you via this route ONS considers that S21(1) applies to this request and the information does not have to be supplied under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act. S21(1) is an absolute exemption and no consideration of the public interest test needs to be applied.