“TACKLING DRUGS IN SCOTLAND ACTION IN PARTNERSHIP”

Interim National Key Indicators Report

Introduction

“Tackling Drugs in Scotland - Action in Partnership” sets out objectives and action priorities for tackling drug misuse, as agreed by the Scottish Executive and the Scottish Advisory Committee on Drug Misuse (SACDM). The objectives are aligned under the four overarching UK aims and key objectives agreed by Ministers in all four countries in the White Paper, “Tackling Drugs to Build a Better Britain”.

Drug Action Teams : Corporate Action Plans

The enhanced drugs strategy also put in place new arrangements for planning and monitoring progress, based on information supplied by Drug Action Teams. In future years information from the Corporate Action Plan (CAP) template will be used to monitor the implementation of the strategy at both local and national level.

Whilst work on the new information template for DATs progresses, this report presents a set of interim national key indicator data in support of each of the four UK Aims. This is based on ISD’s work over the last year in developing key indicator information, utilising national sources of data. The key indicators presented here are either identical, or very close to indicators included in the CAP template.

How the data are presented

The ‘key indicators’ are ordered according to the UK Aim which they are designed to measure. For each of these indicators, the following information is provided :

• A description of what the indicator reports;
• The source of the data presented ;
• The key indicator information : a short commentary, together with charts and/or tables ;
• More detailed background information ;
• Notes on definitions and any limitations of the data.

Where the exact data is not currently available, the data presented represents the ‘best fit’.

Wherever possible, figures have been included for the previous two years, for comparison. The majority of the key indicator information is based on financial years, however in some cases the data is available for calendar years only. Other indicators are based on survey data, rather than routine data collection. In these cases the information cannot be updated annually.