Changing dynamics of drug overdoses in the United Kingdom: An attempt to replicate the Jalal et al. findings of steady exponential growth.

Background: Jalal et al. discovered that between 1979 and 2020 total rates and counts of fatal drug overdoses in the United States exhibited exponential growth at a very steady rate even though deaths from individual drugs did not. That is a startling result because it means that the different drugs are in effect "taking turns", with one growing faster just as another drug's death rate growth ebbs. That raises the question of whether this steadiness in the all-drug death rates is in some sense just a coincidence peculiar to the United States or whether it might reflect some more general phenomenon and so manifest in other countries.

Methods: We fit the same model used by Jalal et al. to data on drug-related death rates for the countries of the United Kingdom.

Results: The main finding is largely a failure to replicate the United States result. Simple graphical display of the trends and a number of statistical measures show that the growth in the United Kingdom was not only slower than in the United States, it was also less steady, with the exception of Northern Ireland.

Conclusions: Steady exponential growth in the all-drugs mortality rate may be a phenomenon specific to certain contexts. It remains an open question whether the explanation of steady exponential growth in the United States and Northern Ireland relates to demand and supply mechanisms, to social and political conditions, or to coincidence.