The official figures for drug related deaths in Dublin city and county are published annually by the Central Statistics Office (CSO). Considering these figure, the drug problem in Dublin has increased dramatically in the past 5 years.

This study uses a different source of information than the CSO to study the number of drug related deaths that occurred in 1997, namely the files in the Offices of the Dublin City and County Coroners. A similar study performed in 1992 found a 100% correlation between the CSO's and the coroners' numbers. This did nor occur in 1997. There was only 79% correlation, with 25 more cases in the study. Since that study the numbers of drug related deaths recorded have increased dramitically and also the types of drugs used have become more varied.