FOI 26-234 Opioid Overdose Incidents
Freedom of Information Request
- Reference
- FOI 26-234 Opioid Overdose Incidents
- Request Date
- 19 May 2026
- Response Date
- 04 Jun 2026
- Information Requested
FIO request questions, based on the previous five years between 2020-2025:
- Number of incidents coded as suspected opioid overdose by year for 2020, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 2025
- Number of incidents where Naloxone was administered by ambulance clinicians by year for 2020, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 2025
- Breakdown of the administration route used (IV, IM, Intranasal) for Naloxone administration cases between the year 2020 and 2025
- Number of incidents requiring repeated Naloxone doses by ambulance clinicians between the year 2020 and 2025
- Number of suspected opioid overdose cases that resulted in cardiac arrest between the year 2020 and 2025
- Number of suspected opioid overdose cases that were: conveyed to ED, discharged / refused care at scene and those who died at scene over the period 2020 to 2025
- For suspected opioid overdose incidents for each year of 2020, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 2025, can your Trust identify and provide how many cases were in a public place versus a private residence.
- Response
Important information to consider when interpreting this data
The Scottish Ambulance Service would like to provide the following contextual information to assist with interpretation of the data provided:
The Service does not hold information on confirmed drug-related deaths. In Scotland, deaths are only formally classified as drug-related by National Records of Scotland (NRS) following receipt and analysis of toxicology results. As such, we are unable to provide information under this definition.
All data held by the Service is recorded on an incident basis rather than at individual patient level. This means that where naloxone is administered at an incident, there may be more than one patient present, and the data does not allow us to attribute treatment to a specific individual.
Where naloxone is recorded as having been administered more than once at an incident, this reflects multiple administrations within that incident, rather than confirmed repeat doses to a single patient. Due to the way data is recorded, we are unable to determine whether multiple administrations relate to the same patient or to different patients.
Clinicians respond to a patient’s clinical presentation, rather than making treatment decisions based on confirmed or assumed substances taken. This is particularly important as substances are often unknown, mixed, or misrepresented. As such, treatment data should not be interpreted as confirming specific drug use.
Within the electronic patient record (EPR), substance-related information can be recorded in multiple ways, including:
- structured overdose substance fields
- substances-affecting-condition fields
- free-text clinical entries
Due to this variation in recording practices, it is not possible to produce a comprehensive or fully accurate analysis of specific substances involved.
The data provided includes only incidents where the final incident code was recorded as ‘23 – Overdose’. While drugs or substances may be a factor in other types of incidents, the Service is unable to determine the extent of drug involvement in those cases. Overdose incidents therefore represent the only defined and reportable category for drug-related harm within our systems.
Please see the attached sheet detailing the following information in the table format.
Table 1 – details the total number of incidents each year where the final code was determined as Overdose and the substance has been marked true for Opioid from 01/01/2020 - 31/12/2025.
Table 2 – details the total number of incidents each year where the final code was determined as Overdose and Naloxone has been administered from 01/01/2020 - 31/12/2025.
Table 3 - details the total number of incidents each year where the final code was determined as Overdose, Naloxone has been administered and the route from 01/01/2020 - 31/12/2025.
Table 4 - details the total number of incidents each year where the final code was determined as Overdose and Naloxone has been administered more than once from 01/01/2020 - 31/12/2025.
Table 5 - details the total number of incidents each year where the final code was determined as Overdose, the substance has been marked true for Opioid and if it resulted in a conveyance to hospital from 01/01/2020 - 31/12/2025.
Table 6 - details the total number of incidents each year where the final code was determined as Overdose, the substance has been marked true for Opioid and the patient refuse to be conveyed to hospital from 01/01/2020 - 31/12/2025.
It is important to note when interpreting this data – This report has been produced in two parts, this is due to the ongoing integration of a new system. This data cannot be merged into one table due to an overlap in a phased introduction of each system and the methodology for the data time frames is different.
The first tab of the sheet takes data collected from our legacy system (T2) and the second tab of the sheet details data collected from (T3)
Q7 – The Scottish Ambulance Service holds information on incident location as part of its operational data. However, this information is not recorded in a way that allows us to categorise incidents as occurring in a “public place” or a “private residence”.
To determine this, the Service would require to manually review individual incident records and interpret the location details on a case-by-case basis. This would involve the creation of new information rather than the provision of information held in recorded form at the time of your request. It is for this reason we have applied section 17 of the Freedom of Information Scotland Act 2002 as information not held.
- Response Documents
