There were almost 30,000 drug seizures made by police in a year, one-fifth of which were class A drugs, new figures have revealed.

Official statistics show that in 2011/12 there were 29,509 drug seizures carried out by officers in Scotland's eight former police forces, up 10.5% on the year before.

There were 5788 seizures involving class A drugs, which was a drop of 4.7% on the previous 12 months.

Officers seized heroin on 2789 occasions, a fall of 628 on the number in 2010/11. However, the quantity of the drug seized increased by 24.9kg to 120.5kg.

Cocaine was seized 2037 times but the quantity decreased by almost one-third to 99.1kg.

There was an increase in the amount of both class B and class C drugs taken off the streets, with 19,292 of the 20,453 seizures of class B drugs involving a seizure of at least one type of cannabis. Most of the class C seizures involved diazepam.

Figures showed 157,900 tablets of ecstasy-type substances were seized, more than 15 times the total in 2010/11. This increase is the result of a rise by the former Strathclyde force which accounted for 95.1% of the total quantity.

The seizures cover the period before Scotland's eight police forces merged to form Police Scotland on April 1.

Community Safety Minister Roseanna Cunningham said: "This Government is working hard to tackle drug misuse. Our approach is threefold – taking drugs off our streets, ensuring young people do not get involved in taking drugs and getting more people into recovery with record investment in frontline services.

"Those who traffic drugs and bring misery to communities have nowhere to hide. Police are making more drug seizures than ever before by taking innovative approaches to dismantle criminal networks.

"Prosecutors give priority to the prosecution of serious crime, including drug trafficking. Together with police they are maxi-mising opportunities to track down and recover ill-gotten gains through the Proceeds of Crime Act, restricting illegal activities and raising funds to diverting young people away from crime through Cashback for Communities."