Visualising the Guardian Datablog

I’m doing a regular weekly visualisation for the excellent Guardian Datablog, the front-end for an amazing library of statistics and data, lovingly hand-gathered by The Guardian.

My first post is about Deadly Drugs.

There’s been a furore over here in the UK about the dangers of illegal drugs. The Government has sacked its most senior drugs advisor, Dr Professor Nutt, after he claimed cannabis was no more harmful than alcohol. And that horse-riding, and specifically ‘equasy’ (Equine Addiction Syndrome) was riskier than taking ecstasy. (Statistically he’s correct. His study here.).

Anyway, digging at the numbers behind his statements and how drugs are reported in the popular press, I found some stuff I didn’t expect about drug harms.

Check out the article on The Guardian blog for detail and data. You want both right?

Posted in Data Journalism, Data Visualisation, De-Hyping, Drugs, Health, Visual Journalism.
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63 Comments

  1. daniel campos
    Posted November 19, 2009 at 2:38 am | Permalink | Edit

    And there’s even more!!!:

    Also, in the spreadsheet that he uses for the statistics (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/ssdataset.asp?vlnk=7892) on cannabis and MDMA, it clearly states that are ” Number of deaths where selected substances were mentioned on the death certificate” – that’s why there are 19 for cannabis.

    Now….

    It is very well known by everybody that number of deaths where ALCOHOL was mentioned on the death certificates is several thousands, not hundreds, and therefore this graph is not only bad, it is *extremely* bad.

  2. big boss
    Posted November 19, 2009 at 3:42 am | Permalink | Edit

    what the ,, prohibition peddling ,,,, 19 deaths for cannabis ,, prove it! ,
    i should think it’s saved more!!!!

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  3. Posted November 19, 2009 at 3:45 am | Permalink | Edit

    This is a great information, ofcourse cannabis deaths are debatable. There are many theories behind this.

  4. Victor
    Posted November 20, 2009 at 6:21 pm | Permalink | Edit

    This is a badly label, and borders on misleading. The “Deadliest Drugs” are not the drugs that kill the most people, but the ones that kill the most users of the drug.

    If you had divided the number of deaths caused by Cocaine by the number of cocaine users, you would likely find that it is deadlier than alcohol, which is used by a huge number of people.

    The alarmist press gives too much airtime to many things, including these drugs, but not for the reasons you try to point out.

  5. Daniel
    Posted November 23, 2009 at 9:48 pm | Permalink | Edit

    Facts are misrepresented. A better way to show this would be show the number of how many people abuse a drug versus how many die as a direct effect of having used the drug. These numbers appear to assume that illegal drugs are used as much as legal drugs.

  6. david
    Posted November 24, 2009 at 5:42 pm | Permalink | Edit

    re: conflicting data about alcohol deaths

    My figures deal with acute poisonings related to alcohol and other drugs.

    Not chronic deaths occurring from long term drinking and alcoholism, as I suspect the 7500 level figures being quoted here are.

    see here
    http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=tFA5-DLo1OBAJty7vzCHs6w

    under the sheet called ‘DIGESTIVE SYSTEM’

    liver disease figures are around 7500.

    Thanks
    david

  7. Posted November 25, 2009 at 5:56 pm | Permalink | Edit

    Wow enjoyed reading your post. I added your rss to my google reader.

  8. john
    Posted November 27, 2009 at 1:18 am | Permalink | Edit

    19 deaths.but 92 reports of death.hmmmmm

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  10. Tim
    Posted December 2, 2009 at 12:57 pm | Permalink | Edit

    People are misinterpreting the point of this data. It’s not an expression of how dangerous a given drug us, for which a deaths to users ratio would indeed be more accurate. It’s a representation of how deaths relating to a substance are reported by the media, so the poputation of users for specific drugs is pretty irrelevant.

  11. Posted February 2, 2010 at 2:00 pm | Permalink | Edit

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  12. Posted February 3, 2010 at 3:51 am | Permalink | Edit

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  13. John
    Posted February 4, 2010 at 7:06 am | Permalink | Edit

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21 Trackbacks

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  4. By www.LadyHi.net on November 7, 2009 at 6:42 am

    Deadliest Drugs: Deaths vs. Media Coverage …

    Cannabis is no more harmful than alcohol. And horse-riding is riskier than taking ecstasy.

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