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Friday, May 25, 2012

Substance Misuse, October-December 2011



Statistics on Substance Misuse in Wales include data concerning people presenting to treatment services for substance misuse. The latest release updates the statistics previously released on 29 February 2012.

The key points from the latest release are:

  • There were more than 6,800 referrals for treatment of alcohol or drug misuse notified to the database. During the quarter over 4,100 assessments were carried out by treatment services and over 3,300 treatments commenced.
  • 51 per cent (3,500) of referrals related to misuse of alcohol, 41 per cent (2,800) related to misuse of drugs and 8 per cent (500) of referrals had no main substance reported.
  • Of those where a main substance was reported 56 per cent of referrals were for alcohol and 44 per cent for drugs misuse. Heroin accounted for 46 per cent of all referrals for which drugs were specified as the main substance, with cannabis (17 per cent) and cocaine (10 per cent) the next most common drugs.
  • Males accounted for the majority of all referrals for both alcohol (64 per cent) and drugs (75 per cent).
  • 71 per cent of referrals for any substance were assessed within 10 working days of referral and 91 per cent of people were given treatment within 10 working days of assessment.


Read Full Report (PDF)