FOI 41-2025 / Jan 2025 / Vape spiking
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 41-2025
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 9th January 2025 as follows:
Confirmed or suspected spiking incidents involving vapes or similar over the last 5 years (2020, 21, 22, 23, 24 – i.e. attended / charged / investigated incidents)
I would like this information broken down by the following, where available:
- Age
- Gender
- Whether the incident occurred at a place of education, for example school or college
- Whether the victim required any treatment at hospital
- Date of the incident
- The drugs involved i.e. spice, nitazenes
Response:
Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act states that a public authority is not obliged to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the “appropriate limit”. For Police forces in the UK, the "appropriate limit" is considered to be up to 18 hours of work on one request. This information is given in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.
Please be advised that there is no specific offence of ‘spiking’ and no flag or marker within the crime recording system to easily identify where spiking has been a factor in a crime. Further, keyword searches are not carried out routinely as they are not reliable. They will only bring back records where the chosen keyword(s) is present within the MO Description / Incident Summary of an investigation. These are limited free text fields and, in the event that the circumstance is relevant to a crime, but where the keyword(s) has not been mentioned within those fields, then such records will not be returned.
Due to not being a specific offence, spiking can form part of, and be investigated and prosecuted under, various crimes. Therefore, in order to determine a response to the request, it would be necessary to examine a broad spectrum of crimes, recorded during the stated period, on an individual basis. This would take an inordinate amount of time and would exceed the amount to which we are legally required to respond, i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.
In accordance with Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice for this request.
Every effort has been made to ensure that the information provided is as accurate as possible.
Your attention is drawn to the below which details your right of complaint.
Should you have any further enquiries concerning this matter, please write or email the Freedom of Information Unit quoting the reference number above.
Yours sincerely
Freedom of Information Officer
Freedom of Information Unit
Warwickshire Police
PO Box 4
Leek Wootton
Warwickshire
CV35 7QB