From the BBC:
Doctors treated 894 people in England for a "cocaine-induced health emergency" in 2007/8... More than one million people regularly use cocaine in the UK - more than any other European country - according to the UN's latest report...
[Cocaine] is increasingly cut with other chemicals - according to the charity* DrugScope. That could make a line more dangerous as people either react badly to the cutting agent or get used to the low purity making them more vulnerable if they accidentally come across a strong batch.
Hey, hang about here ... that means that despite all the crap they put in it (precisely because the supply is not legalised and regulated), less than one in a thousand users ends up going to hospital every year. By reverse logic, if you could buy reliable quality cocaine, the number of admissions might drop to a few dozen a year, or something. Ooh, I'm terrified, not.
* Ahem.
Monday, 13 July 2009
Oh G-d, it just never stops (4)
My latest blogpost: Oh G-d, it just never stops (4)Tweet this! Posted by Mark Wadsworth at 12:39
Labels: Cocaine, Drugs, DrugScope, Legalisation, statistics
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1 comments:
Sorry, Mark - but the article specifically stated "cocaine-induced health emergency" - not health issue. In other words, one in 1000 almost died as a result of using coke - it does not include all those who attended hospitals, clinics, GP surgeries or other health provider as a result of their coke use - most of which would not be admitted to and therefore recorded as such anyway.
If they could buy reliable quality cocaine admissions for emergencies may drop (or might rocket), but admissions for non-ermegency health issues as a result of cocaine use would almost certainly rise rapidly.
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