Home > Drug and Alcohol Information System: overview of initial assessments for specialist drug and alcohol treatment 2023/24. An official statistics release for Scotland.

Public Health Scotland. (2024) Drug and Alcohol Information System: overview of initial assessments for specialist drug and alcohol treatment 2023/24. An official statistics release for Scotland. Edinburgh: Public Health Scotland.

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External website: https://www.publichealthscotland.scot/publications...


This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) reports on people presenting for initial assessment at specialist drug and alcohol treatment services in Scotland in 2023/24. These data were extracted from the Drug and Alcohol Information System (DAISy).

Main points. In 2023/24: 

Initial assessments for 16,507 people accessing specialist alcohol and/or drug treatment were recorded on DAISy.

Demographics:

  • People starting alcohol treatment had a higher median age (47 years) than people starting drug (36) or co-dependency (problematic use of alcohol and drugs) treatment (33).
  • Almost one third (32%) of people starting treatment for problematic substance use were female (68% were male). The percentage of females was highest for people starting alcohol treatment (37%), followed by drugs (28%) and co-dependency (22%).
  • Higher percentages of people starting treatment for co-dependency (13%) and drugs (12%) than for alcohol (1%) were in a prison/young offender institution at the time of their assessment.

Alcohol:

  • The median age for when people deemed that their alcohol use became problematic was 30 years for males and 34 years for females.
  • 89% of people starting alcohol treatment reported drinking in the month prior to their assessment. Spirits (36%) was the most commonly reported main drink type.
  • 61% of people starting alcohol treatment who had consumed alcohol in the month prior to assessment reported drinking on a daily basis.

Drugs:

  • Cocaine (30%) was the most commonly reported main drug used by people starting specialist drug treatment in Scotland, overtaking heroin (28%) for the first time since drug treatment reporting began.
  • Of the people who reported using opioids in the previous month, 63% had a take-home naloxone kit (a medication to prevent fatal opioid overdoses) at the time of initial assessment.
  • 10% of people reported injecting in the month prior to assessment, and 17% reported last injecting more than a month before.

Co-dependency:

  • Spirits was the most common main alcohol type (30%) and cocaine the most common main drug (50%) reported by people starting treatment for co-dependency.
  • Daily alcohol consumption was lower for the co-dependency cohort (29%) than the alcohol cohort (61%).
  • 35% of people in the co-dependency cohort who reported cocaine as their main drug used it at least once a day. This was lower than for the drug cohort (48%).

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