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Thursday, January 20, 2011

Substance Misuse in Wales – quarterly data1



This statistical article provides quarterly statistics on Substance Misuse in Wales, including data on activity by drug and alcohol treatment services in Wales for the current quarter. Data on this subject is already published in an annual report and in this article we are exploring introducing a new series of outputs relating to quarterly data. In order to help us decide whether to introduce this analysis as a regular quarterly output we would welcome any comments on the content and usefulness of this analysis to the email address below.
 
Key results
Latest quarter (July-September 2010 (provisional))
• There were 7,726 referrals for treatment of alcohol or drug misuse notified to the database. During the quarter 4,732 assessments were carried out by treatment services and 3,483 treatments commenced.
 
• 56 per cent (4,305) of referrals related to misuse of alcohol, 35 per cent (2,690) related to misuse of drugs and 9 per cent (731) of referrals had no main substance reported.
 
• Of those where a main substance was reported 62 per cent of referrals were for alcohol and 38 per cent for drugs. Heroin accounted for 49 per cent of all referrals for which drugs were specified as the main substance, with cannabis (20 per cent) and amphetamines (8 per cent) the next most common drugs.
 
• Males accounted for the majority of all referrals for both alcohol (64 per cent) and drugs (73 per cent).
 
• 68 per cent of referrals for any substance were assessed within 10 working days of referral and 89 per cent of people were given treatment within 10 working days of assessment.


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