"Cocaine is killing in record numbers"

More judicious manipulation of the stat's in the press release triggered this story, also parrotted in The Daily Hatemail, who top it with that classic journalistic flourish "Cocaine and Ecstasy deaths up 1,200% since records began in 1993".

Excerpt: The Office For National Statistics figures show drugs poisoning killed 2,640 people in England and Wales last year, up 2.7 per cent from 2006. Cocaine claimed a record 196 lives last year, up from just 11 when the figures were first recorded in 1993.

If you go to Table 2b on page 84 of the full report, it says that there were 1,958 deaths where only one drug was mentioned on death certificate. The figures given add up to 1,605; the ones that mention an illegal/non-prescription drug add up to a princely 762 (if I've classified them correctly).

Horrifying is the number of deaths (167) from methadone, which is supposed to be a legal/safe substitute for heroin/morphine (587 deaths), especially as ten times as many people take heroin (according to that Horizon programme). MDMA/Ecstasy looks like a pretty safe bet (28 deaths out of half a million people who take it), but as ever, cannabis is tip-top of the list of safe drugs - one or two deaths out of millions who enjoy it regularly. Which is why The Powers That Be have to perpetuate the myth that it drives you mad; the scare story that it kills you will never stick.

BTW, the 'drugs charity' DARE mentioned in the Hatemail article is probably just another taxpayer-funded quango - it got a fair bit of money of Nottingham and Mansfield councils etc (see page 15 of the 2007 accounts). It spent a third of its income on 'education and publishing' and pissed away the rest on 'administration costs' (page 7).

Addaction (also mentioned in one or other of the articles) is a quango, as previously covered.