Mephedrone and the number 25

This is how the saga played out in the news.

• 17 March BBC: How has mephedrone affected users?
• 17 March BBC: Review of mephedrone drug pledged.
• 29 March Guardian: Mephedrone to be banned and made class B drug after link to 25 deaths.
• 2 April Guardian: Mephedrone ban prompts latest drugs council resignation.
• 7 April BBC: Mephedrone ban backed by Commons.
• 16 April BBC: Drugs: The facts.
• 16 April BBC: Mephedrone ban comes into effect

Then this today from the BBC:

Teenagers' deaths 'not caused by mephedrone'

Back in March hue and cry over the possibility that 25 people might have died as a result of taking mephedrone, and another of the Govt drug advisers resigned in disgust at their advice being ignored by a Govt keen to curry favour with a disaffected public. Now it turns out that at least two of them had not taken the drug, but the law has still been changed.

• 23 July (Guardian) Mephedrone not to blame for death of teenager, say Cumbria police.

Let's compare with other mortality stats in the UK. The Office for national statistics tells us:

The number of alcohol-related deaths in the United Kingdom has consistently increased since the early 1990s, rising from the lowest figure of 4,023 (6.7 per 100,000) in 1992 to the highest of 9,031 (13.6 per 100,000) in 2008. http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=1091

That's 9,000 in 2008. That's actually 25 deaths definitely from alcohol per day, every day. And rising, having doubled in the last 16 years.

By contrast there were 2075 drug related deaths in 2008: some details include 897 deaths from heroin, 378 from methadone, 242 from paracetamol. On the face of it paracetamol is far more likely to kill you than mephedrone, but you need to take into account the vast quantities of it that are consumed each year. (Still it can kill you).

Deaths from road accidents:

The total number of deaths in road accidents fell by 7 per cent to 2,946 in 2007 from 3,172 in 2006. However, the number of fatalities has remained fairly constant over the last ten years.

That's almost 250 per month, or about 25 every 3 days.

The Office for National Statistics doesn't publish tobacco death rates on it's website but the NHS reckons the deaths attributable to tobacco in England in 2008 was 84,000. That's about 236 a day, or 10 per hour! So 25 in 2.5 hours. Assuming the same smoking patterns in the rest of the UK that's about 98,000 for the UK, giving 268 per day, 11 per hour, and 25 in 136 minutes.

So to summarise, in the UK, according to official statistics:

• Tobacco kills 25 people every 135 minutes.
• Alcohol kills 25 people a day.
• Road accidents kill 25 people every 3 days.
• Heroin kills 25 people every 10 days.
• Paracetamol kills about 25 people a month.

Maybe we need to reassess our priorities? The question for the new government is given the policy on drugs which do much less harm to the population: why are tobacco, alcohol still legal? (Indeed given how many deaths are caused by cars, why are they still legal?) Why is there such a fuss about these small time party drugs which we have yet to prove harmful, when 11 people an hour, almost 1 every 5 minutes are dying from tobacco.

BTW I do not endorse drug use. I think taking drugs is stupid unless you have to for medical reasons, and even then they are problematic. But I also think it is stupid for taking drugs to be a criminal offence. Two stupids don't make a smart.