§ Mr. FlynnTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will estimate the number of(a) casualties and (b) fatalities caused by the interaction between prescribed and illegal drugs in each of the last three years. [11016]
§ Mrs. Liddell[holding answer 28 July 1997]: The information requested falls within the responsibility of the chief executive of the Office for National Statistics. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.
136WLetter from Tim Holt to Mr. Paul Flynn, dated 29 July 1997:
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has asked me to reply, as Director of the Office for National Statistics (ONS), to your recent parliamentary question on drug casualties and fatalities. However, this information is not held centrally.The ONS collects and compiles information on the cause of all deaths registered in England and Wales. In the case of deaths due to any form of poisoning by drugs or drug abuse, the death will be certified by a coroner following an inquest. The coroner's certificate of cause of death, used to register these deaths, includes a short section on the cause (in the format of the medical certificate of cause of death recommended by the WHO), the verdict and certain details about the circumstances of accidental deaths. The level of information therefore normally received by the ONS would include the names of all the drugs known to have been taken or found in toxicological analyses. When more than one drug is mentioned on the certificate, it is not usually stated which was responsible for the death, nor whether any interaction between them was suspected or proven.Whether a drug was prescribed for the deceased or another person, bought over the counter or obtained illicitly is not normally recorded on the death certificate. The coroner's verdict may state that the death was due to dependence on or abuse of a drug or drugs. However. many certificates of deaths due to poisoning with controlled drugs do not mention abuse or dependence, and may have accidental, suicidal or open verdicts. Many controlled drugs can be legitimately prescribed for therapeutic purposes. A very small number of deaths are certified as due to adverse reactions to therapeutic drugs in normal use, with either an accidental or therapeutic misadventure verdict. In addition to controlled and prescription only drugs, those taken therapeutically may include over the counter preparations.A greater level of detail may be recorded in the coroner's inquest reports, but these are not routinely collected, coded or analysed nationally.The ONS does not collect figures on admissions to hospital, patients seen in accident and emergency departments or cases notified to poisons advice centres.