FOI reference: FOI-2025-3158
You asked
I would like to request an overview of the extent and trends of illicit drug use in England and Wales for the year ending July 2025.
This data should be from the Crime Survey for England and Wales.
We said
Thank you for your request.
In our Drug misuse in England and Wales articles we publish the extent and trends of drug misuse in England and Wales. The articles are accompanied by our Drug misuse in England and Wales – Appendix table. Our most recent Crime Survey for England and Wales data are for the year ending March 2024. We publish a number of tables showing time series trends of drug use. These tables include:
Table 1.01 – Proportion of people aged 16 to 59 years reporting use of drugs ever in their lifetime, statistical significance of change year ending March 2024 compared to selected years, England and Wales, year ending December 1995 to year ending March 2024
Table 1.02 – Proportion of people aged 16 to 59 years reporting use of drugs in the last year, statistical significance of change year ending March 2024 compared to selected years, England and Wales, year ending December 1995 to year ending March 2024
Table 1.03 – Proportion of people aged 16 to 59 years reporting use of drugs in the last month, statistical significance of change year ending March 2024 compared to selected years, England and Wales, year ending December 1995 to year ending March 2024
We provisionally plan to publish our Drug misuse in England and Wales: year ending March 2025 release on 11 December 2025, as can be seen in our release calendar.
As such, the information you have requested is exempt under Section 22(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, whereby information is exempt from release if there is a view to publish the information in the future. As a central government department and producer of official statistics, we need to have the freedom to be able to determine our own publication timetables. This is to allow us to deal with the necessary preparation, administration and context of publications. It would be unreasonable to consider disclosure when to do so would undermine our functions.
This exemption is subject to a public interest test. We recognise the desirability of information being freely available and this is considered by the ONS when publication schedules are set in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics. The need for timely data must be balanced against the practicalities of applying statistical skill and judgement to produce the high quality, assured data needed to inform decision-making. If this balance is incorrectly applied, then we run the risk of decisions being based on inaccurate data, which is arguably not in the public interest. This will have an impact on public trust in official statistics in a time when accuracy of official statistics is more important to the public than ever before.
If you have any further crime-related queries, please email the ONS Centre for Crime and Justice at CrimeStatistics@ons.gov.uk.