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Need more statistics!

Posted: Fri 1st May 2009 01:51 am
by PirateRaff
Need some stastiscs about how many heroine users there are in the diffrent places of the world and how many alcoholpoising deaths and how many overdose deaths

Posted: Sat 2nd May 2009 01:33 am
by Ingwey Gooblebogger
As someone with experience in this area, I'll give my opinion on this matter.

Unfortuantely these statistics are, usually, fraught with much error, due to many factors, some of which are impossible to correct.

The best you can do is give estimates of the counts and then also supply appropriate caveats so these numbers are not misinterpretted.

One problem you will encounter with the numbers, is the issue of "double counting", due to multiple substances on board.

In my experience, it is extremely uncommon to find only one substance in a post-mortem toxicology report. Indeed, these reports almost look like a shopping list of substances including illicit drugs, over-the-counter drugs, prescription drugs, and alcohol.

The double counting comes in when you find that a person died of a combind substance overdose. For example, the person who died due to a barbituate, heroin, and alcohol overdose. This one could be counted as a barbituate overdose, a heroin overdose, and an alcohol overdose.

So, the total count of all drug/alcohol deaths for this example is only one, but if you list deaths by single substance, and then try to sum up all deaths, by substance, your counts will not match the totals.

Another issue is the opinion of the doctor and /or toxicologist regarding relevancy of the substance to the death. That is, when multiple substances are found on board, then, sometimes, it is the doctor's opinion of whcih substances contributed to the death. Hence, this may not be 100% consistent, as another doctor might have another opinion.

If that wasn't enough, the issue gets cloudier when all of the substance found are at sub-lethal levels. So, which combination of substances were responsible for the death?...Wait, it gets worse...If the deceased had a pre-existing medical condition then they might be much more presdisposed to overdose, even on quite low doses.

Finally, heroin, which has chemical name, in North America, of Diacetyl morphine (or in UK/Eurpoe Diamorphine) has the problem that it metabolises into 3-monoacetyl morphine (almost NEVER found on toxicology reports), 6-monoacetyl morphine, and morphine. Both 3 and 6 monoacetyl morphine have VERY short half life, so often the only metabolite of heroin, found in the toxicological analysis is the morphine.
This is problematic, since only the monoacetyl morhines are unabiguous indicators of heroin use. Morphine is a metaboline of many opiates, including, codeine. Morphine would also show up in from taking morphine sulphate, and so on. Hence, determining whether the overdose was due to heroin, morphine, codeine, or any other opiate, is very difficult if no monoacetyl morphine is detected in toxicology analysis. Again the doctor/toxicologist might determine this death based on the person's known use of heroin, but this is still speculation.

There are other issues as well, so there you go.

To determine the number of drugs users, it gets even more difficult and fraught with error, but I won't bore you further.

I would suggest that you take any numbers you get with a grain of salt and read any and all caveats provided with the numbers.