Drugs and substance misuse

Drug addiction leads to significant crime, and has substantial health and social costs. Evidence-based drug treatment reduces these and delivers real savings, particularly in crime costs, but also in savings to the NHS through health improvements, reduced drug-related deaths and lower levels of blood-borne disease.

It is estimated that there are more than 5,000 problem drug misusers in Kent.

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Our resources

Data and reports

Information on hospital admissions for mental and behavioural disorders due to psychoactive substances can be found in the 'mental health and wellbeing' and 'inequalities' sections of our Health and Social Care Maps.

We have also produced the following needs assessments:

Library services

The Public Health and Social Care Library can provide access to library and knowledge services, including books and journal articles relating to drugs and substance misuse. We can also produce bespoke literature searches.

Please contact the public health specialist librarian: emma.ramstead@nhs.net

Requests

If you can't find what you were looking for, we complete over 200 ad-hoc requests for analysis each year. Request further analysis or a literature search or contact us.

External resources

A number of organisations produce statistics relating to drugs and substance misuse, both at national and local level.

NHS Digital publish a 'Statistics on Drug Misuse' report and a 'Smoking, Drinking and Drug Use Among Young People' report.
Office for National Statistics (ONS) publish statistics on drug-related deaths
Public Health England (PHE) provide key information and data about drug misuse and treatment services.
The Public Health England Health Profiles and Child Health Profiles provide snapshot overviews of health for local areas, and include some data on prevalence and drug-related hospital admissions.