National Mission on Drugs: Annual Monitoring Report 2024-2025
This third annual monitoring report provides an analysis of the progress made between April 2024 and March 2025 on the National Mission to reduce drug deaths and improve lives.
3. Overarching outcome: Reduce drug deaths and improve lives
3.1 Summary
Headline metrics
Number of drug deaths: 1,017 people died of a drug death in 2024. Decrease of 13% on 2023; lowest annual number since 2017.
Commentary: Drug deaths are lower than at the start of the National Mission but remain at a high level. Measuring progress towards the improving lives aspect of the National Mission continues to be challenging.
3.2 Background
The National Mission aims to reduce drug deaths and improve the lives of people affected by drugs. Scotland experiences higher drug-related harm than the rest of the UK and Europe, and drug use remains one of the leading causes of avoidable deaths and health loss in Scotland, reducing life expectancy and exacerbating health inequalities.[1],[2] While the challenge is complex and multi-faceted, the number of drug deaths remains a key measure of progress alongside assessing improvements in the lives of those affected.
3.3 Headline metrics
3.3.1 Headline metric: number of drug deaths
The number of drug deaths provides an overall measure of the most severe harms arising from drug use. There were 1,017 drug deaths registered in Scotland in 2024 (Figure 2). This was a decrease of 13% (155 deaths) compared with 2023 and the lowest number in any year since 2017. Males were more than twice as likely to have a drug misuse death as females but this gap between sexes has narrowed over time. The age profile of drug deaths has become older over time and the rate of drug deaths in those aged 35-54 years is more than five times the rate for those under 35 years and those aged 55 years and over.[3]
Source: Drug-related deaths in Scotland in 2024, National Records of Scotland, September 2025
The association of deprivation with drug deaths is much greater than with other causes of death. In 2024, people in the most deprived areas of Scotland were almost 12 times as likely to die from drugs than people in the least deprived areas (see Outcome 5).
Drug deaths in Scotland remain at a high level compared to the rest of the UK, and much more common than they have been in the past. Over the last 20 years, drug poisoning death rates have increased more rapidly in Scotland than in England and Wales and remain substantially higher in Scotland than in the rest of the UK. In 2024, the drug poisoning mortality rate in Scotland (21.7 per 100,000 people) was 2.4 times higher than the rate in England (9.1) and 1.6 times higher than the rate in Wales (14.0). This is a slight narrowing of the gap in rates from 2023 (where Scotland’s rate was 2.8 times higher than England’s and 1.9 times higher than Wales’s).[4],[5]