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Elizabeth Y. Lambert, MS
National Institute on Drug Abuse Rockville, Md

Bernard Gropper, PhD
National Institute of Justice Washington, DC

JAMA. 1990;263(21):2887-2888.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

The article by Marzuk et al¹ on the prevalence of recent cocaine use among motor vehicle fatalities in New York City was both intriguing and perplexing. The high rate found among passengers and drivers between 16 and 45 years of age did not surprise us, nor did the high conjoint prevalence of cocaine and alcohol. However, we were puzzled by the insignificant changes found in the prevalence of these drugs before and after the widespread availability of crack cocaine (ie, when data from 1984 through 1985 were compared with data from 1986 through 1987).

We use a variety of indicators for surveillance of the nature and extent of substance abuse, including the Drug Abuse Warning Network, a probability-based system that collects data on drug abuse—related emergency department and medical examiner mentions from metropolitan areas throughout the country; the Community Epidemiology Work Group, a work group of . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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