Meaningless statistic of the day

From The Daily Mail:

In a list of places where people do drugs, it's probably one of the last you would expect to find a class A substance. However, incredibly, traces of cocaine have been found in more than nine out of 10 baby-changing units in the north west, research has found. An examination of more than 100 units - including facilities in public toilets, shopping centres, police stations, courts and churches - found that 92 per cent of them carried traces of the class A drug...

You'd need nerves of steel to take cocaine in a police station or court, and I didn't know that churches had toilets, but apart from that, so what?

It is, for example, quite possibly the case that cocaine residue is very difficult to clean away and/or that baby changing units are not cleaned very often or very thoroughly. So if a baby-changing unit has only been used for sniffing cocaine a single time in the past few days, which might mean a single visitor out of dozens or hundreds, it still shows up as positive.

Or possibly nine-out-ten UK babies are addicted to cocaine, but that does seem unlikely. How would they fund their habits, for a start?

Prescription painkillers cause more deaths than heroin and cocaine

From The LA Times:

Overdose deaths from abuse of prescription painkillers in the U.S. now outnumber deaths involving heroin and cocaine combined, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Tuesday.

In 2008, drug overdoses caused 36,450 deaths in the U.S. One or more prescription drugs were involved in 20,044 of these deaths, CDC researchers wrote in the journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Opioid pain relievers, including oxycodone, methadone and hydrocodone, were involved in 14,800...

In 2010, 4.8% of Americans 12 years or older used opioid pain relievers nonmedically -- that is, without a prescription or purely for the feeling the drug causes. The report calculated that by 2010, "enough opioid pain relievers were sold to medicate every American adult with a typical dose of 5 mg of hydrocodone every four hours one month."

That last bit doesn't make sense, why "one month" right at the end, but I think what they mean is a lot of painkillers were sold.

Unfortunately, even though this is a splendid headline, the simple comparison between number of deaths caused by X and by Y is fairly meaningless unless we know the number of people taking X and the number taking Y. It may well be that two hundred million Americans take painkillers every day, but only (say) ten million people use heroin or cocaine, in which case the latter are still more dangerous (on a personal level) than legally available painkillers.

Oh noes! Cocaine use up yet again!

From The Metro 3 December 2009:

The number of men under 35 seeking treatment [for cocaine addiction] jumped from 3,024 in 2005-06 to 5,264 in 2008-09. And the rise among young women is almost as steep – from 790 to 1,261

Meanwhile, the number of young people seeking treatment for heroin addiction has dropped dramatically. In 2005-06, almost 20,000 men needed treatment for the drug but that figure is now under 15,000.

From The Metro 5 October 2009:

The number of 18 to 24-year-olds seeking treatment for heroin or crack fell by 22 per cent to 9,632 between 2005-6 and 2007-8, official figures show

But the numbers of young adults presenting for treatment for cocaine dependency rose by more than two-thirds to 2,692 over the same period.

Twisted statistics of the day

From The Metro:

Fewer young adults with a drug problem are using heroin and crack - but the number of young people needing treatment for cocaine abuse is rising.

Here we go ...

The number of 18 to 24-year-olds seeking treatment for heroin or crack fell by 22 per cent to 9,632 between 2005-6 and 2007-8, official figures show. But the numbers of young adults presenting for treatment for cocaine dependency rose by more than two-thirds to 2,692 over the same period.

Or, as I would put it, "The number of young adults seeking treatment for heroin, crack or cocaine dependency fell by an eighth, or by 1,608* between 2005-06 and 2007-08."

* Maths point - I assumed that "more than two-thirds" means a seventy per cent increase, so I calculated the 2005-06 comparatives as 9,632 ÷ 78% = 12,349; 2,962 ÷ 170% = 1,583; 12,349 + 1,583 = 13,932. The total for 2007-08 is 9,632 + 2,692 = 12,324.

I blame the parents (part 94)

From The Metro:

The son of former health secretary Patricia Hewitt has been charged with possession of cocaine. Nicholas Hewitt Birtles, whose father is Judge William Birtles, will appear in court later this month after he was charged with possession of a class A drug.

Cocaine safer than alcohol: shock

From The Metro:

The number of people being killed by cocaine has soared by a fifth in just one year, official statistics have shown. There were 235 deaths involving the class A drug in 2008, up from 196 the year before and up by half since 2004... As many as 1million people, half of them aged between and 16 and 24, are said to take cocaine. Prices have fallen to £40 a gramme from £77 a decade ago...

Drug deaths remain dwarfed by those from alcohol, put at nearly 9,000 in a year.

OK, what's safer, statistically speaking: something used by a million people that is "involved" in 235 deaths (which is slightly different to "killing", natch), or something used by half the population (30 million people) that is "involved" in 9,000 deaths?

Clue: 235 x 30 = 7,050

[Modest] Outbreak of commonsense in Mexico

From The Metro:

Mexico has relaxed its drug laws, allowing people to possess small amounts of cannabis, cocaine or heroin for personal use.

Free government treatment for drug addicts is also promised under new regulations that come into force today. The law sets out maximum "personal use" amounts for drugs, also including LSD and methamphetamine. People found with no more than the limits allow will no longer face criminal prosecution - but if caught for a third time will be forced into treatment.

Under previous law, possessing any amount of drugs was punishable by stiff jail sentences, but there was some leeway for addicts caught with smaller amounts.

But Bernardo Espino del Castillo, from the attorney general's office, said in practice no one was prosecuted and sentenced to jail for small-time possession. "We couldn't charge somebody who was in possession of a dose of a drug, there was no way, because the person would claim they were an addict," he added, "This person obviously couldn't be charged, not yesterday, not the day before, not a year ago, but the bad thing was that it was left up to the discretion of the detective, and it could open the door to corruption or extortion."

Officers sometimes hauled suspects to police stations and demanded bribes, threatening long jail sentences if people did not pay.

"This is not legalisation, this is regulating the issue and giving citizens greater legal certainty for a practice that was already in place," Espino del Castillo added.

The maximum amount of marijuana considered to be for "personal use" under the new law is 5g - the equivalent of about four joints. The limit is half a gram for cocaine, enough for about four lines, while the other restrictions are 50mg of heroin, 40mg of methamphetamine and 0.015mg of LSD.

Oh G-d, it just never stops (4)

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.

"Halve drug deaths by making heroin and cocaine legal"

It's nice of The Metro to publicise this report (pdf), by proper charity Transform (according to its accounts, it gets about £100,000 in donations and nothing from the government). The response from the Home Office at the end is the usual excruciating fact- and logic-free crap.

It certainly makes a refreshing change from the dumbass readers' letters that The Metro published this morning:

So Alec thinks 'drug use is a victimless crime? Tell that to the friends and families of addicts who are forced to watch their loved ones descend into dependency, poverty and even crime to fuel their habit. It's not big or clever. Ruth, Birmingham.

Where does Alec think these drugs come from? Organised gangs that fund child prostitution and murder. Lee Dancer, Essex.

UPDATE: for completeness, Alec's original letter (text, actually) in yesterday's Metro was as follows: "There shouldn't be a 'war on drugs'. Drug use is a victimless crime and should be legalised and taxed. Alec, London." In itself worthy of being made 'Reader's letter of the day' for its brevity, if nothing else.

Law of unintended consequences

From The Metro:

Police are shining 'magic torches' into clubbers' faces to check for tiny traces of cocaine – and now employers and parents are being encouraged to follow suit. Forces across the country are buying the £40 torches which can make any microscopic particles of cocaine or amphetamine that are invisible to the naked eye appear bright green...

The torches are produced by Wrexham-based JNE Marketing, intending them to be used to show markings on stolen property. It only realised they could be used to spot drugs when police officers starting asking about them. They will detect cocaine that is at least 87 per cent pure and 78 per cent pure amphetamine of, including some, but not all, Ecstasy pills.

Right. So they'll just start cutting the cocaine a bit more so that it is no more than three-quarters pure.

That's that fixed. Next.

"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.

"Mexico's drug killings soaring"

More huge successes to report from the frontline in the War On Drugs!

"UK could be wine region by 2080"

What sort of a f***ing stupid headline is that?

Monday's FT cheerfully reproduced the press release for a book entitled "The winelands of Britain: past present and prospective", full of words like "could" (used three times), "forecast", "in future", "according to", "climate models suggest", "by as much as" and "by 2080".

Yeah, and by then, pig-bat hybrids might fly.
............
In the same section (bottom of page 2, print edition), they summarise the press releases from:

1. Druglink Magazine as did The Sun, but without the breathless headlines, or indeed, the useful comparative figure for total admissions relating to legal drugs. So that's The Sun - one, FT - nil. Drugscope seem honest enough, but a glance at their accounts shows that they are (disappointingly, but predictably) largely state-funded.

2. Hometrack, under the misleading headline "House prices fall 1.9% in May". Wrong, house prices fell 1.9% in the year to May. In any event, their prices are based on the contributor's opinion on the achievable selling price for each of four standard property types in every postcode district. So that means pretty much f*** all.

3. The Local Government Association, titled "Calorie warnings sought for drinks". The summary contains the outrageous claim "drinkers do not realise the contribution of alcohol to getting fat". Er, are we not familiar with the expression 'beer gut'? Have we never watched darts on the telly? Least said, soonest mended on that one, I think.

4. Last but not least, "Personal carbon trading favoured". Yeah, favoured by deluded MPs ... Oh God.

In summary, a crock of shit.

"Cocaine victim numbers surge"

Shock! Horror!

The number of cocaine users admitted to hospital has more than quadrupled in eight years, it was revealed yesterday ... gasps The Sun breathlessly, ... The worrying statistics point to a dramatic rise in the drug’s popularity over the last decade..

It then continues with some hard facts ...
Cannabis poisonings nearly halved during the same period. Good stuff. Why is that not worthy of a headline?

The Government figures reveal 740 people needed emergency treatment after bingeing on cocaine during 2006/07, compared with 161 in 1998/99. Wot? Out of maybe half a million users, 740 overdoses? I'd guess that the bulk of these relate to crack-cocaine anyway, which is a truly vile drug, not the good old Bolivian marching powder that merely turns you into an arrogant arsehole and makes your nose bleed. Even if this guess is wrong, it's not much of a message is it "Kids! Don't do cocaine! There's a one-in-a-thousand chance you'll overdose if you take it regularly for a year! And going by these stat's, zero chance that you'll die!"

The majority – 629 – were men and their average age was 29. Yeah, so? Cocaine is taken predominatly by relatively wealthy men in their twenties, any fule kno that.

... the number of cannabis users needing treatment fell from 171 to 96 – and heroin overdoses fell from 1,962 to 1,530. Isn't that something to celebrate - out of one or two million cannabis users, only 96 needed treatment? Ditto heroin, with 300,000 users?

Last month the Government revealed drug-related hospital admissions had soared by more than a third since 2002. Many of the 215,447 admissions were for legal drug overdoses or accidental poisoning. So, er, by these figures, illegal drugs caused about 3% as many admissions as legal ones? And even legal drugs only accounted for 2% of all admissions (approx. ten million). Hardly a f***ing epidemic, is it?

H/t EUReferendum, who makes further very interesting points.

Reverse the ageing process!

"Cocaine users 'getting younger' " say the BBC.

That's the first time I've heard that cocaine was good for you.