Medical Emergencies and Death from Drug Abuse
Each year, thousands of individuals of all ages visit hospital emergency departments due to medical problems stemming from drug abuse. Sometimes they die as a result of these problems. Efforts to keep track of these visits give scientists a clue as to the scope of drug abuse in the United States and which drugs are responsible for medical emergencies. These figures can also help experts spot emerging trends in the use of new drugs.
The Drug Abuse Warning Network
The Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) was created in 1972 by the U.S. Department of Justice as a surveillance system for new drugs of abuse. It is a voluntary national data collection system that gathers information on substance abuse resulting in visits to hospital emergency departments in the continental United States. DAWNdoes not measure prevalence, or the frequency of drug use in the population. Instead, it relies on a number of hospitals that give a representative sample of emergency department visits due to drug use. This data can than be interpreted for the population at large.
DAWN uses drug episodes and drug mentions to organize the information it provides. A drug-related episode is an emergency department visit that was caused by or related to the use of an illegal drug or the nonmedical use of a legal drug.
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