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Interpreting our drug mortality statistics: Holes in the data on illegal drugs
Author(s) -
Sullivan Lucy G
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
medical journal of australia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.904
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1326-5377
pISSN - 0025-729X
DOI - 10.5694/j.1326-5377.1994.tb127607.x
Subject(s) - harm , drug , medicine , incidence (geometry) , environmental health , demography , pharmacology , law , political science , sociology , mathematics , geometry
Estimates of mortality attributable to legal and illegal drugs are often used in the debate on legalisation as an indication of the comparative harmfulness of the drugs concerned. Yet there are few data on the health impact of illegal drugs and mortality figures are not adjusted for prevalence of drug use. The estimates therefore indicate only currently statistically assessable harm; they do not reliably express either the comparative incidence of drug‐caused mortality, or their innate harmfulness. (Med JAust 1994; 161:569‐570)