You asked
I wanted to ask if there are recent data on young people and drug misuse from 2015 until 2020. There are data on your website up until 2015 but I wanted to see if there are any changes from 2015 until recent 2020.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
We produce an annual statistical bulletin on deaths related to drug poisoning, including drug misuse, in England and Wales. The most recent figures available are for deaths registered in 2018.
The bulletins accompanying dataset provides an array of figures on drug misuse for persons aged under 20 years old; breakdowns include: by registration year, sex, substance(s) involved in the death and by the deceased's area of usual residence.
Death classified as drug misuse must be a drug poisoning and meet either one (or both) of the following conditions; the underlying cause is drug abuse or drug dependence, or any of the substances controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 are involved. More information on definitions and ICD codes can be found in the Quality and Methodology Information report.
NHS Digital's Statistics on Drug Misuse publication provides a range of information relating to drug misuse drawn from a variety of sources, including their own Smoking, Drinking and Drug use among Young People (SDD) report and Public Health England (PHE) Substance misuse treatment for young people report.
If the above data does not meet your requirement, bespoke analyses of drug-related deaths data (and other causes of mortality) for England and Wales may be commissioned independently. Such services would fall outside of the Freedom of Information regime and would be subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreement of costs where appropriate. If this is something you would be interested in, please contact the Lifestyle and Risk Factors Analysis Branch via Health.Data@ons.gov.uk. For more information about our charging rates, please see our website.