§ Mr. Wheelerasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will elaborate on the information provided to the Home Affairs Committee on the number of narcotic drug addicts notified to his Deprtment during 1984.
§ Mr. BrittanInformation for 1984 on notified drug addicts seizures of controlled drugs and drug offenders will be published in a Home Office statistical bulletin during the summer. Some provisional information on new addicts is, however, available now. This confirms the indications of the likely level of increase given in the recent Home Office publication "Tackling Drug Misuse: A Summary of the Government's Strategy", and in my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State's evidence to the Select Committee on Home Affairs. The provisional figure for new addicts notified during 1984 is 5,370 a 28 per cent. increase on 1983 (4,186). This was the fourth successive year in which there has been a substantial increase, although the increase was less than the 50 per cent. rise between 1982 and 1983. The table gives the provisional numbers of new addicts notified in each police force area in 1984. Corresponding figures for the years 1978 to 1983 are given in table 3.11 of "Statistics of the Misuse of Drugs, United Kingdom, Supplementary Tables 1983", a copy of which is in the Library. The proportion of new addicts who were reported as addicted to heroin, alone or with other drugs, was about 90 per cent. in 1984, continuing the steady increase in this proportion during the last six years—it was about 60 per cent. in 1978. Indications are that notifications of former addicts also increased by about a quarter between 1983 and 1984.
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New narcotic drug addicts notified to the Home Office during 1984 by police force area United Kingdom Number of persons (provisional)✶ ENGLAND Avon and Somerset 110
United Kingdom Number of persons (provisional)✶ Bedfordshire 40 Cambridgeshire 20 Cheshire 95 Cleveland 5 Cumbria 35 Derbyshire 35 Devon and Cornwall 30 Dorset 25 Durham 5 Essex 80 Gloucestershire 10 Greater Manchester 215 Hampshire 65 Hertfordshire 55 Humberside 25 Kent 45 Lancashire 110 Leicestershire 15 Lincolnshire 5 Merseyside 480 Metropolitan Police District (including City of London) 2,400 Norfolk 95 Northamptonshire 20 Northumbria 40 North Yorkshire 5 Nottinghamshire 20 South Yorkshire 70 Staffordshire 35 Suffolk 10 Surrey 60 Sussex 135 Thames Valley 95 Warwickshire 20 West Mercia 40 West Midlands 75 West Yorkshire 60 Wiltshire 15 Total for England 4,705 WALES Dyfed-Powys †— Gwent 30 North Wales 20 South Wales 55 Total for Wales 105 SCOTLAND Central 10 Dumfries and Galloway 5 Fife 5 Grampian 10 Lothian and Borders 165 Northern 5 Strathclyde 310 Tayside 40 Total for Scotland 550 Northern Ireland 10 TOTAL FOR UNITED KINGDOM 5,370 ✶ Rounded to the nearest 5 † Less than 5.