Drug Abuse Warning Network

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The Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) is a public health surveillance system that monitors Drug-related visits to hospital emergency departments and Drug-related deaths investigated by medical examiners and coroners [1].

1 Organization
2 History
3 Controversy
4 External links

[edit] Organization

Hospitals participating in DAWN are non-federal, short-stay general hospitals that feature a 24-hour emergency department[2]. Patients are never interviewed. All data are collected through a retrospective review of patient medical records and decedent case files. DAWN collects detailed drug data, including illegal drugs of abuse, prescription and over-the-counter medications, dietary supplements, and non-pharmaceutical inhalants [3]. Because the DAWN cases are defined broadly, DAWN captures many different types of drug-related cases[4].

[edit] History

In 1974, DAWN was designed and developed by the scientific staff of the DEA's Office of Science and Technology. It was jointly funded with the National Institute of Drug Abuse(NIDA)[5]. DAWN then became a division of the United States Department of Justice before becoming part of NIDA in 1980. On October 1, 1992, DAWN became part the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services [6]. SAMHSA has contracted with Westat, a private research corporation, to manage the New DAWN on the agency’s behalf[7].

[edit] Controversy

Information collected by DAWN is widely cited by drug policy officials, who have sometimes confused Drug-Related Episodes - emergency room visits induced by drugs - with Drug Mentions. The Wisconsin Department of Justice claimed, "In Wisconsin, marijuana overdose visits in emergency rooms equal to heroin or morphine, twice as common as Valium." Common Sense for Drug Policy called this as a distortion, noting, "The federal DAWN report itself notes that reports of marijuana do not mean people are going to the hospital for a marijuana overdose, it only means that people going to the hospital mention marijuana as a drug they use" [8].