Confiscations of diazepam along with other benzodiazepines have increased almost twofold in the previous 2 years in Scotland. Current statistics indicated that over 2 million tablets, such as Valium, were discovered by law enforcement.
Support agencies state that the group of psychoactive drugs called benzodiazepines are way too convenient to get hold of and can result in lethal ramifications.
The most recent data also indicated that cannabis was still the drug most seized in Scotland in 2016/17.
Overall, Law enforcement discovered 18,000 cannabis plants, roughly 8,600 ecstasy-type pills together with 2.2 million Class C drugs like diazepam.
The volume of Class A and B drugs confiscated decreased from over 1.2 tonnes in 2015-16, however, the number of individual seizures of cocaine, ecstasy, heroin and cannabis rose from 3,376 to 3,399 in that time frame.
The number of drugs confiscated could certainly vary significantly on a yearly basis and will not likely shift in accordance with the number of seizures made.
Although the majority of drug confiscations are comprised of comparatively small amounts (typically possession-related offences), yearly amounts of drugs confiscated might be greatly impacted by a couple of huge seizures (typically from supply-related offences).
Evaluation of data from 2014 to 2017 discovered that 49% of drug confiscations occurred in the street, with 28% in a residence or backyard garden.
Drug confiscations tend to be more prevalent at weekends, with Fridays and Saturdays representing 20% and 19% during the last 3 years.
The statistics demonstrated that most (86%) of the culprits were male with an average age of 29 years old.
Photo Credit: “Happy days / DIAZEPAM” (CC BY 2.0) by Francisco Javier Argel
Zoom Testing is a leading UK drug testing company and a supplier of Drug Test Kits.
This post was originally published in May 2018 and has been updated since.
