E for Ecstasy by Nicholas Saunders
Appendix 1: Reference Section

22 Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) figures, published by The U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse, 1992

The NIDA collects reports of patients attending hospital emergency departments who are suspected of, or admit to having used illicit drugs from across the US. The institute also collects information from coroners and postmortems. As a result, it is able to provide nationwide figures on drugs which present problems. Annual DAWN publications contain analyses of reports of any drug mentioned more than 200 times a year or causing more than 10 deaths. MDMA has never been included in the reports, as it comes 136 in the hierarchy of drugs reported as causing problems. According to DAWN data, MDMA is not a significant drug abuse concern in the US.

The 1992 report also includes a survey of the use of illicit drugs by US college students who are within 1-4 years of leaving high school. There were about half as many illicit drug users in 1990 as in 1980. MDMA was only included in the survey in 1989, 1990 and 1991 and over these three years MDMA use among college students declined. In 1991, 0.2% had used MDMA in the previous 30 days compared to 0.6% in 1990 and 0.3% in 1989. In 1991, 15.2% of the sample had used an illicit drug in the past 30 days, implying that MDMA was used regularly by only 1.3% of illicit drug users.

Figures for drugs used in 1991 show that Ecstasy was used by 0.9% as compared to 2.3% in each of the preceding two years. 29.2% had used some illicit drug in the year; about half as many as in 1980.