Mortality of individuals arrested for heroin, cocaine or crack use

The existing statistical systems provide details, with varying amounts of information missing, on deaths from overdose and AIDS of users who inject. This information covers only some of the causes of death and does not allow the high mortality of drug users to be calculated. This remains an assumed figure based on the information available on the dangerousness of the various substances and the results of studies carried out abroad.

Measuring mortality requires that it is possible to relate the number of deaths recorded over a given period to a population exposed to a risk factor. In short, rigorous estimating of mortality assumes the setting up and prospective monitoring of a cohort of active users of illicit drugs. This solution, which is complex to implement and very expensive, has to date not been adopted in France.

To compensate for this deficiency, the OFDT has drawn up a draft retrospective study of a cohort, which has produced an estimate of the high mortality in users of illicit drugs based on the deaths that have occurred among individuals arrested at the beginning and in middle of the 1990s for drug use or for drug use and trafficking. This study received the approval of the CNIL (National commission for computing and liberties) in June 2002.