Circumstances surrounding deaths caused by synthetic cannabinoids

You asked

Please provide information on the circumstances surrounding deaths where synthetic cannabinoids were mentioned on the death certificate. For example, did spice cause organ failure? Cardiac arrest? Suicide? Accident whilst under the influence?

We said

Many thanks for your recent request.

You asked for information on the circumstances surrounding of deaths where synthetic cannabinoids were mentioned on the death certificate. i.e. how spice caused those deaths, was due to organ failure? Cardiac arrest? Suicide? Accident whilst under the influence?

There are four categories of causes in relation to drug related deaths:

• Mental and behavioural disorders due to drug use (excluding alcohol and tobacco);

• Accidental poisoning by drugs, medicaments and biological substances;

• Intentional self-poisoning and poisoning of undetermined intent, by drugs, medicaments and biological substances; and

• Assault by drugs, medicaments and biological substances.

Unfortunately we are unable to release the information you require due to disclosure controls. Under s.39 of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007, personal information held by us (including information that identifies a body corporate), must not be disclosed. Because the release of the information you have requested is prohibited by law, s.44 of the Freedom of Information Act 2007 applies.

We can aggregate categories and years in order to provide estimates. However, the deaths do not include other adverse effects of drugs (for example, anaphylactic shock), or other types of accidents (for example, a car crash) where the driver was under the influence of drugs.

Special extracts and tabulations of mortality data for England and Wales are available to order (subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs, where appropriate). Such enquiries should be made to: mortality@ons.gov.uk. We recommend that you contact the Mortality Analysis team directly in order to discuss your data requirements in more detail.

The following table is an extract of table 8 in the most recent drug related deaths bulletin found here:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsrelatedtodrugpoisoninginenglandandwales/2016registrations