Each year, the National Record of Scotland (NRS) releases a report of drug-related deaths in Scotland. We produce our own summary of the figures, drawing attention to some of the information we most want you to know about.
We hope that by sharing this overview we can provide greater context for new figures, and time to reflect on those we lost in 2024. We expect to see 2025 figures released over the next month.
You can download our summary for last year’s NRS figures, “Drug Related Deaths in Scotland 2024” here.
Graph depicting overview of NRS statistics 2020-2024
What is a drug-related death?
A drug-related death is generally a poisoning caused by the toxic effects of a controlled drug. Not every death related to the use of drugs is counted as a ‘drug-related death’ and the definition is not straightforward.
“The ‘baseline’ definition for the UK Drugs Strategy [15] covers the following cause of death categories (the relevant codes from the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, Tenth Revision [ICD10], are given in brackets):
a) deaths where the underlying cause of death has been coded to the following sub-categories of ‘mental and behavioural disorders due to psychoactive substance use’:
- opioids (F11);
- cannabinoids (F12);
- sedatives or hypnotics (F13);
- cocaine (F14);
- other stimulants, including caffeine (F15);
- hallucinogens (F16);
- inhalants (F18);
- and multiple drug use and use of other psychoactive substances (F19).
b) deaths coded to the following categories and where a drug listed under the Misuse of Drugs Act (1971) was known to be present in the body at the time of death (even if the pathologist did not consider the drug to have had any direct contribution to the death):
- accidental poisoning by and exposure to drugs, medicaments and biological substances (X40 – X44);
- intentional self-poisoning by and exposure to drugs, medicaments and biological substances (X60 – X64);
- assault by drugs, medicaments and biological substances (X85); and
- poisoning by and exposure to drugs, medicaments and biological substances, undetermined intent (Y10 – Y14).
- mental and behavioural disorders due to drug use (excluding alcohol, tobacco and volatile solvents): (F11-F16, F19.)”
Highest drug-related death rate in Europe
Scotland has the highest drug-related death rate in Europe and is approximately 2.7 times that of the rest of the UK (England, Wales and Northern Ireland).
Scotland in comparison to other UK countries
This graph below uses data from the European Drug Agency (EUDA)’s report for 2025 to illustrate the amount of ‘drug-induced’ deaths aged 15-64: per million people in Europe, with Scotland’s death rate of 246 (people per million) included for comparison.
Scotland in comparison to the European countries included in the EUDA Report (2025)
