E for Ecstasy by Nicholas Saunders
Appendix 1: Reference Section

81 Phone call to Mr R Allen, at the Home Office Statistics Dept., 1/3/93

The Home Office does not have recent statistics on drug-related deaths; the latest it holds are those reported in Hansard80. Allen says that the Home Office's only knowledge of deaths that have occurred in the past two years is from newspaper reports. [These are of course unreliable]. He said: "The truth is between 10 and 20 deaths so far are 90% suspected to be due to Ecstasy - but don't quote this as a Home Office figure. These are people who have either died from overheating or from a rare extreme reaction, just as some people have been known to have died from a bee sting."

However, an attempt is now under way to produce figures more on the lines of DAWN, the US system of monitoring drug-related deaths.22 "We have people going through wads of death certificates," Allen said. However, figures are unlikely to be ready before the end of 1993.