Drug and alcohol information system (DAISy)
Overview of Initial Assessments for Specialist Drug and Alcohol Treatment 2023/24

About this release

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%).

Background

DAISy is a unique source of data on people accessing treatment for problematic substance use. It provides insights into their drug and alcohol use, health and social circumstances at the point when they contacted services for treatment. National DAISy data recording began in April 2021.

This release should be viewed in conjunction with the associated Excel workbook which provides users with accessible interactive content based on data from 2023/24.

Further information

The next release of this publication will be Winter 2025.