Incidence and Prevalence of Drugs and Narcotics Use in Crimes: A Case Study of Police General Hospital, Bangkok

Abstract

This cross-sectional descriptive study was aim to estimate the incidence and prevalence of drugs and narcotics found in cases of alleged drug-facilitated crimes. Data were collected from toxicological findings of patients presenting to Police General Hospital ED with suspected surreptitious drug administration between January 2010 and December 2015. Data were collected from 875 patients in 6-year period. Overall, 427 cases were positive for one or more substances. The most common drug found was benzodiazepines with 328 cases (37.5%).  Alprazolam had the highest prevalence of 214 cases, representing 24.5%, followed by diazepam (3.0%) and midazolam  (2.7%). However, 39 cases were positive for temazepam and oxazepam which are also active metabolites of other benzodiazepines, therefore the parent drug was unlikely to be identify. The most prevalent narcotics found was Methamphetamine in 43 cases (4.9%) In addition, there were56 cases (6.4%) positive for more than one drug.