Sullivan L G
Department of Public Health, University of Sydney, NSW.
Med J Aust. 1994 Nov 7;161(9):569-70.
Estimates of mortality attributable to legal and illegal drugs are often used in the debate on legalisation as an indication of the comparative harmfulness of the drugs concerned. Yet there are few data on the health impact of illegal drugs and mortality figures are not adjusted for prevalence of drug use. The estimates therefore indicate only currently statistically assessable harm; they do not reliably express either the comparative incidence of drug-caused mortality, or their innate harmfulness.
在关于毒品合法化的辩论中，常有人用合法及非法药物所致死亡率的估算数据来表明相关药物的相对危害性。然而，关于非法药物对健康影响的数据很少，而且死亡率数据并未根据吸毒流行率进行调整。因此，这些估算仅表明目前在统计学上可评估的危害；它们既无法可靠地体现药物所致死亡的相对发生率，也无法体现其内在危害性。
