Women are less likely to experience drug and alcohol problems than men. However, the story doesn’t end there. For International Women’s Day 2022, Natalie Davies runs through the key figures about women, drugs and alcohol.

My aim with this article is to present up-to-date, nationally-relevant or representative data about women, drugs and alcohol in the UK. I hope it will be a resource that you can ‘bookmark’ and come back to. Bear in mind that England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales often have their own ways of collecting data and their own timescales for reporting. Also, not all of the available datasets provide a breakdown by sex or gender.