Number of cannabis associated admissions and total admissions from 2018-2024

​​​​Request 718300286

At the last Quarterly Hearing with the Minister for Health & Social Services held on the 20th May 2025, the Director of Mental Health and Adult Social Care raised concerns over "a significant increase in people that are requiring admission acutely, for example, to Orchard Ward, who have been using large amounts of prescribed cannabis prior to that admission".

https://statesassembly.je/getmedia/b7f7e9f6-d9f3-4c54-889e-f77a53a1ba30/Jersey-HSS-Minister-for-Health-and-Social-Services-20-05-2025-(1)-(003).pdf#page=28​

Please could you provide figures for the number of cannabis associated admissions as well as total admissions per year from 2018* to 2024?

* Or as far back as is achievable within the constraints of Article 16 of the FOI Law.

Further information to support your question or request: For reference of comparable data from Guernsey, please see page 40 of the Bailiwick of Guernsey Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy Annual Report 2024:

https://gov.gg/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=189060#page=40​

Clarification requested 

Please could the applicant confirm that their request is for admissions to all Mental Health wards / facilities, or if the query is specific to Orchard Ward?

Clarification received

Please could the Department provide the number of cannabis associated admissions to all mental health wards / facilities, broken down by the particular ward / facility, if possible.

Response

Annual admissions to each of Health and Care Jersey’s Mental Health inpatient services, from 2018 to 2024, are detailed in the attached table. As noted in a Freedom of Information request published to www.gov.je​ in May 2023, Maple Ward and Oak Ward closed in 2020.

Freedom of Information response 718300286 - Attachment.pdf​

It is not possible to report data on cannabis-associated admissions to Mental Health inpatient services for this timeframe from central records held, owing to limitations in coding and reporting functionality. Whilst information would be documented within an individual’s clinical notes, significant manual interrogation of individual case notes for all admissions would be required to identify the requested information. Such manual examination of records would exceed the timescales prescribed in the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014. Therefore, Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

Records for Health and Care Jersey confirm that there have been 100 admissions to Orchard Ward (the working age adult acute mental health ward) between 01 January 2025 and 31 July 2025. Of those admissions, cannabis use was identified in the initial assessment as a risk factor in 20 admissions, 6 of which included the reported use of prescribed medicinal cannabis.

Article applied

Article 16 - A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.​​