August 23, 2007

Drug related deaths might not be what they seem

The UK counts drug related deaths to include drug abusers and non drug abusers, even though these figures are not accurate they are used to monitor the work of the Drug and Alcohol action teams, according to a study from Substance Abuse Treatment - Prevention and Policy.

The way that the figures are collated it is hard to work the figures from what sort of deaths i.e. drug related or not. For example Dr. Caryl Beynon from Liverpool John Moores University, studied the details of 70 drug related deaths, Liverpool has the highest figure for the UK.

It was found that the sample included non drug related deaths; these were older people who had died due to the effects of anti depressants, anti psychotics and painkillers, rather than hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine.

So what it means it the figures do not actually give a true picture of the drug problem.

Source [Medical News Today]