FOI 25-512 Prison Incidents involving Drugs
Freedom of Information Request
- Reference
- FOI 25-512 Prison Incidents involving Drugs
- Request Date
- 07 Nov 2025
- Response Date
- 21 Nov 2025
- Information Requested
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, please provide the following information for your ambulance service area:
The total number of ambulance call-outs to prisons (including all categories of incidents) in each of the following 12-month periods:
April 2024 – March 2025
April 2023 – March 2024
April 2022 – March 2023
For the same periods, please provide the number of those call-outs recorded as being related to suspected drug use, overdose, poisoning, or psychoactive substances (including synthetic cannabinoids such as “Spice” or “NPS”).
If available, please provide any further breakdown of call-outs by:
If exact “Spice” or “psychoactive substance” coding is not available, please provide data for the closest available equivalent category (e.g. “overdose/poisoning” or “suspected drug misuse”).
Please provide the data in an electronic format such as CSV or Excel.
If any part of this request exceeds the cost limit, please process the remainder and advise which elements could be refined to stay within scope.- Response
The Scottish Ambulance Service does not hold information against specific locations such as prisons and therefore have applied section 17 of the Freedom of Information Scotland Act 2002 as information not held.
We can provide information on incidents within postcode locations. The following postcode locations have been used to identify Prisons; however please note caution when interpreting this data - The incidents provided are inclusive of all areas, both internal and external within these postcode areas and may not be attributed directly to the prison.
The incidents provided have the final code of overdose plus the use of the specific substances noted below: Amphetamines
- Benzodiazepines
- Cocaine
- Ecstasy
- LSD
- New Psychoactive
- Opioids
- Prescription Benzodiazepines
- Street Benzodiazepines
This information has been provided from two systems within SAS as a new clinical system is being phased in. This phased system has been in place since June 24 and involves only a portion of Scotland. There is the possibility that an incident from the Terrapace 3 system could be counted in the Terrapace 2 system and therefore the figures in the table should NOT be added together.
Terrapace 2:
Financial Year
T2 Attended Incidents
T2 Final Code Overdose
T2 Overdose + Substance Noted
2022 - 2023
1158
157
18
2023 - 2024
1643
311
36
2024 - 2025
1887
390
37
Terrapace 3
Financial Year
T3 Attended Incidents
T3 Final Code Overdose
T3 Overdose + Substances Noted
2024-2025
125
19
<5
For the given data, you will see that some of the figures are shown as, five or less than five, please note that this figure has been suppressed because the statistical value is less than five. The Scottish Ambulance service has a duty, under the Data Protection Act to avoid directly or indirectly revealing any personal details. It is therefore widely understood that provision of statistics on small numbers, five or less are statistically suppressed upon disclosure.
