The study is the first to estimate the number of people dependent on opioid drugs (such as heroin), and who are in or could benefit from drug treatment, among Scotland’s population since 2015/2016 estimates were published. 

Scotland has one of the highest rates of drug-related deaths in Europe, with the number of these more than doubling between 2011 and 2020. At 250-300 per million population in 2021-22, Scotland’s rate of drug-related deaths was sixteen times higher than the average in the European Union and on par with rates in North America. As part of the response to the public health emergency in drug-related deaths, the Scottish Government-commissioned study sought to understand whether the number of people with opioid dependence among its general publication is also increasing. 

To predict how many people aged 15 to 64 years old are opioid dependent, researchers from Bristol's National Institute for Health and Care Research Health Protection Research Unit (NIHR HPRU) in Behavioural Science and Evaluation applied a statistical modelling technique using data from Public Health Scotland’s Scottish Public Health Drug Linkage Programme, including information on people in drug treatment called opioid agonist treatment (OAT – primarily methadone and buprenorphine) and data on opioid-related mortality and hospital admissions. 

In these new estimates, researchers found the prevalence of opioid dependence in Scotland to have been relatively stable between 2014/15 to 2019/20, with 47,100 people estimated to be opioid-dependent in 2019/20 – which is 1.3 per cent of the adult population aged 15-64. 

Read the full University of Bristol news story

Paper: 'Prevalence of opioid dependence in Scotland 2015-2020: a multi-parameter estimation of prevalence (MPEP) study' by Andreas Markoulidakis, Matthew Hickman, Hayley E. Jones et al. in Addiction