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?
63 Comments
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.
what the ,, prohibition peddling ,,,, 19 deaths for cannabis ,, prove it! ,
i should think it’s saved more!!!!
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/group.php?gid=169748050377&ref=ts
This is a great information, ofcourse cannabis deaths are debatable. There are many theories behind this.
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.
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.
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
Wow enjoyed reading your post. I added your rss to my google reader.
19 deaths.but 92 reports of death.hmmmmm
[...]one another must read source on this issueis ,www.informationisbeautiful.net,[...]
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.
I usually don’t post on Blogs but ya forced me to, great info.. excellent! … I’ll add a backlink and bookmark your site.
-Robert Shumake Paul Nicoletti
Super-Duper site! I am loving it!! Will come back again – taking your feeds too now, Thanks.
surface encounters macomb mi
Hey. I don’t normally leave comments, but I just wanted to say thanks for the great information. I have a blog too, though
I don’t write as good as you do, but if you want to check it out here it is. Thanks again and have a great day!
The Hangover Review
21 Trackbacks
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by greychampion, Instant QuoteStore. Instant QuoteStore said: Visualising the Guardian Datablog http://bit.ly/YIWbq [...]
[...] De dodelijkste drugs van het Verenigd Koninkrijk06-11-2009 om 17:31 door Nick Ottens De dodelijkste drugs zijn heroïne, morfine, alcohol and antidepressiva Drugs, Waan v/d Dag Terug naar het [...]
[...] View post:Â Visualising the Guardian Datablog | Information Is Beautiful [...]
Deadliest Drugs: Deaths vs. Media Coverage …
Cannabis is no more harmful than alcohol. And horse-riding is riskier than taking ecstasy.
…
Deadliest Drugs: Deaths vs. Media Coverage [INFOGRAPHIC] …
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/visualising-the-guardian-datablog/...
[...] drugs & media coverage Visualising the Guardian Datablog | Information Is Beautiful [...]
[...] http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/visualising-the-guardian-datablog/ a few seconds ago from web [...]
[...] Source:http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/visualising-the-guardian-datablog/ Tags: alcohol, deaths, drugs, ecstasy, horse riding, media coverage [...]
[...] Apropos Abhängigkeit: (unter anderem) eine wunderbare Infografik zur Letalität von Drogen im Vergleich zur Presseberichterstattung – oder besser noch, direkt beim Grafiker selbst. [...]
Visualising the Guardian Datablog: 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 specificall…
[...] saite Information is Beautiful. Também recomendo o Gapminder. Meu outro blógue Dicionário [...]
Beware of two-minute videos on evolution…
Greetings.Jewish date:  23 Marḥeshwan 5770 (Parashath Ḥayye-Sarah).Today’s quasi-holidays:  Sesame Street Anniversary, Marine Corps Day.Worthy causes of the day:  “IBR Message Center | UANI:  Send……
[...] Visualising the Guardian Datablog [...]
[...] is a particularly notorious violator of this rule, as these three examples show: deadliest drugs, how safe is the HPV vaccine?, reduce your chances of dying in a plane crash (scroll down to the [...]
[...] at Information is Beautiful during the past few months, leading up to the book release and recently started doing a weekly graphic for The Guardian Datablog. The book is like that, but much more of [...]
[...] at Information is Beautiful during the past few months, leading up to the book release and recently started doing a weekly graphic for The Guardian Datablog. The book is like that, but much more of [...]
[...] Cómo los medios manipulan las muertes relacionadas con drogas [ENG] [...]
[...] recent post looked at the poisoning deaths in the UK and then compared them to the number of press reports the [...]
[...] subject is taboo – from Deadliest drugs vs. popular press coverage to the 2012 “end of the world” hullaballoo, informationisbeautiful.net tackles it [...]
[...] van Napoleon in Rusland. Een erg sterk voorbeeld van McCandless zelf is deze grafiek over de relatieve dodelijkheid van drugs. Het resultaat ziet er bedrieglijk simpel uit, maar de weken, maanden, jaren werk die erin kruipen [...]
[...] primeiro frila que o David McCandless, do crucial Information is Beautiful, fez para o Datablog, do Guardian, ele [...]