DRUG-DRIVE DEATH TOLL RISES AMONG YOUNG

UP TO 12,000 people a year - 32 every day - are dying drug-related
deaths, a government report is set to reveal.

The report, due out in the spring, will reveal for the first time the
full scale of the crisis. Current Home Office figures show only about
800 people dying annually as a result of drug use, 15 times fewer than
the figure in the report.

The research, by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD),
was ordered by the "drug tsar" Keith Hellawell last year after
officials told him available figures were unreliable.

The document will reveal alarming trends on the use and effects of
drugs. It will show, for example, that many young people have largely
rejected drinking and driving, but think nothing of getting behind the
wheel after smoking cannabis or taking amphetamines.

The scale of deaths due to methadone, the legal heroin substitute,
among "former addicts", as well as the issue of babies born addicted
to hard drugs, will also emerge.

Previously, only people who died directly from the effects of drugs,
such as overdoses, were counted; but the report includes "direct,
indirect and related" deaths: for example, those dying in car crashes
while on drugs, people dying of Aids if they contracted the virus
through drug use or those who die after being attacked by someone on
drugs. Researchers collated information from coroners, police and
other agencies to assemble the final tally.

Hellawell felt that a true "warts and all" figure was needed before
the problem could be tackled properly.

Although police and drug workers have known for years that the scale
of drug deaths was much higher than officially admitted, in-depth
research into the problem has never been ordered before.

The findings will shock ministers, especially as they come just a few
months before the first indications emerge of whether or not the
government has hit its new annual targets on drugs.

Hellawell hopes to persuade ministers to go further, making cutting
drug deaths a "key performance indicator", with targets which will
have to be hit each year on top of current demands.

A Home Office source indicated that ministers would not shy away from
tackling the scale of the problem revealed in the ACMD report.

"When you make the sort of efforts this government has made to tackle
the drug problem, you know there are going to be home truths to deal
with," he said.

"If we have a true figure for drug deaths, it will also show us where
we are doing well at reducing them."