Estimation of Mortality Rates, Life Expectancy, and Life Potential of Illegal Drug Users

• Published date: 01 April 2018
• Date: 01 April 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0022042617753628
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0022042617753628

Journal of Drug Issues

2018, Vol. 48(2) 285 –294

© The Author(s) 2018

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DOI: 10.1177/0022042617753628

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Article

Estimation of Mortality Rates,

Life Expectancy, and Life

Potential of Illegal Drug Users

Zofia J. Mielecka-Kubień1

Abstract

The study presents proposed methods of estimation for mortality rates of illegal drug users and

nonusers and their application in estimation of the life expectancy and the life potential loss of

the users in Poland. Mortality rates for male users were in Poland in 2013, as an average, 4 times

higher for male illegal drug users than for nonusers, and 7 times as high for females. For male

illegal drug users, the loss of more than 12 years of life can be expected, whereas for females the

figure stands at about 8 years. Similar losses of life potential of the users can be expected. The

applied methods can be particularly useful in estimation of the social costs of illegal drug use.

The results strongly underline the negative effect of the drug use which may have a preventive

effect.

Keywords

illegal drug users, mortality rates, life expectancy, life potential

Introduction

Premature mortality is a very important consequence of the use of illegal drugs usually estimated

within the social costs studies. It is often expressed with the number of lives lost by illegal drug

users and the number of years of their life lost in a certain period. To underline the negative effect

of illegal drug use on premature user mortality, it is proposed to estimate mortality rates for ille-

gal drug users and to compare them to estimated mortality rates of drug nonusers. On this basis,

under certain assumptions, life table parameters, including life expectancy at the age x, for illegal

drug users and nonusers can be estimated, followed by estimates of life potential, understood as

the number of years a population partly composed of illegal drug users or a population of nonus-

ers is expected to live.

To calculate the mortality rates for illegal drug users, apart from the number of users, the

number of deaths related to the use of illegal drug is needed. Such deaths can be either directly

caused by illegal drug use (meaning that if not for illegal drug use, no death would occur) or

indirectly caused by illegal drug use, which means that the persons who have never used drugs

can die from such causes of death, so also other factors, not only drugs, contribute to the deaths

of drug users.

1University of Economics in Katowice, Poland

Corresponding Author:

Zofia J. Mielecka-Kubien, Department of Statistics, Econometrics and Mathematics, University of Economics in

Katowice, ul. 1-Maja 50, 40-287 Katowice, Poland.

Email: zofia.mielecka-kubien@ue.katowice.pl

753628JODXXX10.1177/0022042617753628Journal of Drug IssuesMielecka-Kubien

research-article2018