They may, however, regain voting rights when they are released. We apologize for the error. We regret the error. Several readers brought to our attention a discrepancy in the numbers relating to illicit drug use. Marijuana causes a tiny fraction of those deaths.
Some clarifications are in order.
In fact, alcohol is a factor in at least 100,000 American deaths per year. Illicit and illegal drugs, however, directly and indirectly cause between 10,000 and 16,000 deaths per year, according to figures from the Drug Abuse Warning Network and the Lindesmith Center. According to Drug Sense, the 52,000 drug-death figure drug czar Barry McCaffrey has circulated, and which our article used, comes from unpublished research prepared for Office of Drug Control Policy, which has still not been released for public scrutiny. The number also can be deceptive, in that it includes all drug-related deaths, including suicide, homicide, motor vehicle injury, HIV, pneumonia, hepatitis, endocarditis, and infant deaths, as well as overdoses. Marijuana has been, in fact, never proven to have directly caused any death, according to Drug Enforcement Administration's Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young.