The above news from ITV six days ago, including evidence that drug deaths in Northern Ireland are approaching the level reported for Scotland, has prompted Dorothy to remind me of this research.
I’m grateful to Jim Beattie and Anonymous for first drawing my attention to Comparability of drug-related death statistics across the United Kingdom by Paul Breen of the UK Civil Service on 4 August 2023, at:
We’ve been here before with data relating to bad news in England.
For example, we’ve seen NHS England restarting the clock in A&E to reduce apparent waiting times, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine exposing the ‘real’ number of 12 hour waits, a general failure to report hospital-acquired Covid infections and deaths, and more recently, plans to just abandon most cancer waiting time targets.
With the release today of Scotland’s drug deaths data for 2022, showing a 21% decrease but receiving a grudging response from media and opposition politicians, parts of this analysis are very interesting.
However, as always, I’m doing this quickly, to get the ideas out there for further and hopefully more rigorous scrutiny. Please read, share widely and comment.
Here are, I think, the key points.
First:
The definitions used for drug-related death statistics are consistent across the UK, but there are important differences in data collection methods and in the death registration systems that affect these statistics.
Second:
For England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the only information received by the ONS and NISRA is what is included on the death certificate. The amount of information varies and can be very limited. For drug-related deaths in Scotland, NRS receives additional information on the drugs involved.
Third:
The differences mean that the amount of information held on drug-related deaths varies across the UK. In 2021, 25.1% of drug-related deaths registered in England and Wales had no information on the specific substances involved. The equivalent figure for Scotland was 1.9%, and for Northern Ireland the figure was 6.6%. The proportion of drug-related deaths where no information about specific substances is known has remained consistent over time in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Meanwhile, the proportion of these deaths has been increasing over time in England and Wales, with important consequences for drug-related death statistics.
Fourth:
In most cases a death cannot be called a drug misuse death when no information on the specific substances is known or provided. Because of this, figures for drug misuse are underestimates. But the figure for England and Wales underestimates the number by a far greater extent.
The different levels of missing data mean that the respective figures for drug misuse published by the ONS for England and Wales, NRS for Scotland, and NISRA for Northern Ireland, are not directly comparable.
So, I think this means that around a quarter of all English drug-related deaths are not being counted because the drug is not identified but in Scotland less than a fiftieth fall into this category.
If correct this may mean that not only does Scotland have the highest drug death rate in Europe but so does the whole of the UK.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
The BBC website reported the decrease in drug deaths in Scotland but unable to let it STAND as better news they then added their usual BBC treatment upon the article…. in adding the dreaded additional word to convey tis still a #SNPBAD story…….as in….this time adding “However” ( they also frequently use other additional words like….. “BUT”…”Experts say however”….”Opposition parties say however”….
So they added “However” onto their article after reporting the decrease in drug deaths in Scotland…..as in this….
“However, Scotland continues to have the worst drug death rate in the UK and the rest of Europe.
Despite the fall in drug misuse deaths, they are still more than three times as common as they were two decades ago”
Only the BBC can report news which should be reported as good news but they manage to spin into yet another #SNPBAD story….thus leaving the public with the impression that no real achievement has been reached via the Scottish government….aka the SNP…who are thus still BAD….very very BAD….via the media and others…and too, the media and others hope, also via the public as well….
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They were all at it today,
ebc
stv
sky
times
herald,
All report the fall BUTT.
If you were to think about it you would think it was demanded.
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I thought drugs policy was reserved to Westmister?
All that Holyrood can do is equivalent to applying a sticking plaster to a gaping wound.
The real cause of drug abuse is deprivation which is a result of other policies reserved to Westminster.
It seems however that blame for these failed reserved policies is entirely the responsibility of the Scottish government.
The real purpose of devolution.
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National Records of Scotland published its own account of the differences in measurement and definitions today 22 August.
It concludes: ‘In Scotland, only around 2% of all drug deaths had unspecified drugs. By contrast, in England and Wales around 25% of all drug deaths had unspecified drugs. This means that the drug misuse figures for the different UK countries could be underestimated by quite different amounts.’
However, it. adds: ‘The drug poisoning figures are not affected by this issue, so this is a better definition for comparing death rates across the UK.
‘Whichever definition is used, it remains the case that Scotland has a much higher drug death rate than anywhere else in the UK. The scale of the difference under either definition highlights that differences in production of the statistics do not explain the gap.’
See https://blog.nrscotland.gov.uk/2023/08/22/what-actually-counts-as-a-drug-death/
Comparing the figures for 2021, NRS notes that the figure for deaths by ‘drug misuse’ per 100,000 population in Scotland is 4.8 times higher than England’s whilst for deaths by ‘drug poisoning’ it is 3.3 times higher than in England.
Whilst accepting the above, what never gets mentioned in the media is the rising trend and large variation in rates of drug related deaths between the regions of England. Yes, the absolute numbers are lower than in Scotland but the trend and scale of difference strongly indicate that the policies of the Westminster government are NOT working for the whole of England and not for Wales either.
This kind of analysis would place Westminster’s refusal to permit certain policy innovations to help solve Scotland’s drug problem in context.
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The real tragedy of course is that we must endure this grief next year. There may be more deaths, hopefully there will be none. The courts must protect our care system and NHS to avoid as many as possible.
These are peoples’ lives and the whataboutery is largely irrelevant because the people who died last year obviously cannot be included in the figures for next year.
The causes of the additions will be known and they should largely be placed at the hands of the UK Prime Minister. We should fill his mailbox with the information that makes him personally responsible.
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Whereas I have some doubts over the accuracy of the England figures for a variety of reasons, the numbers though falling are still statistically higher in Scotland
– However, looked at it in perspective, the Scotland average is 14 more per 10,000 deaths than the average for England, or 8 per 10,000 for NE England, it’s not great but not a massive difference either, and before data began to be collected nobody knew or cared (Labour SG over waiting times for instance).
– It’s certainly not an “epidemic” but the end result of waves of them over time, undoubtedly connected to depression and poverty.
Between the Tories and the BBC in Scotland there’s been much to be depressed over.
It might be interesting for SG to publish a heat map of drug related deaths, the spikes will probably be in all the major cities, but at least it puts a better perspective on it for Scots than Ciaran Jenkins’ inane rhetoric..
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