You asked
Can you tell me how many people have died each year since (and including) 1995 until this year in ecstasy related deaths?
Can you also say how many of them each year were teenagers?
We said
Thank you for your query regarding the number of deaths resulting from ecstasy since 1995.
ONS publish data on Deaths Related to Drug Poisoning, England and Wales. The latest data available is for deaths up to and including 2015: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/deathsrelatedtodrugpoisoningenglandandwalesreferencetable
Table 6a and 6b in the reference tables provide counts of death registrations where specific drugs have been mentioned on death certificates. In Table 6a, we have listed all drugs mentioned on death certificates. So the numbers for MDMA/Ecstasy (MDMA is the pharmaceutical name for ecstasy - 3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine) in this table are the number of deaths which had MDMA/Ecstasy and other drugs mentioned on the death certificate. Table 6b lists drugs that were the sole mention on the death certificate. It is important to note that the data in this publication does not include all deaths where MDMA/Ecstasy had been taken as our drug-related deaths definition only includes deaths where the underlying cause was poisoning or the result of drug abuse or drug addiction.
The tables provide counts back to 1993, which is when this information started to be held by ONS.
ONS has published MDMA/Ecstasy deaths by age group. Table 2 in the link below provides this breakdown: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/adhocs/006112ecstasydeathsbyageandgenderenglandandwales1993to2015registrations
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 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.