Unfortunately, it is only at this belated point that we begin to have a good count of infected adults. The National Center for Health Statistics of the Centers for Disease Control publishes death and death rate information on something they call drug-induced causes. But it includes much more than that. Poisonings by drugs, medicaments, and biologicals, undetermined whether accidentally or purposely inflicted. Drug-induced causes exclude accidents, homicides, and other causes indirectly related to drug use.
Technical subjects are, well, technical.
The number of Latino pharmacologically-related deaths were estimated by assuming that deaths to Latinos due to the pharmacological properties of drugs were proportional to the number of Latinos in each of the racial groups in 1992. Since Latinos were 10 percent of the white population in 1992, it was estimated that 10 percent of the pharmacologically-related deaths among whites involved Latinos. Similarly, since Latinos were 4 percent of the black population and 7 percent of the combined Asian and American Indian populations, it was estimated that Latino deaths were 4 and 7 percent of the pharmacologically-related deaths in each of those groups respectively. Using this procedure, there were an estimated 1,073 pharmacologically-related deaths among Latinos in 1992. It would be of great interest to know how many deaths actually are caused by illicit drugs each year.