Life expectancy and mortality, all causes and related to cannabis use General information about age-specific mortality and life expectancy are readily available (e.g. for Belgium, see http://statbel.fgov.be/). The causes of mortality in Belgium can be found in the ‘Nationale Databank Mortaliteit’ Gemcitabine HCl (National Database Mortality), but caution is needed when interpreting this Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries information, due to likely miscoding [57]. Besides, the definition of ‘drug related death’ does not include all deaths caused by drug use. For example, deaths caused by lung cancer, which in turn may partially be caused by smoking cannabis, are not recognised as drug related. It should be noted again though, that there is no known fatal dose of cannabis, and no death has ever been attributed solely to the use of cannabis.

Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries For these reasons, Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries it is difficult, if not impossible, to express the effects of prevention of cannabis use in terms of mortality measurements. Intervention costs To map out the direct costs of personnel and material, a process evaluation will be necessary [58]. In doing so, resource use will fall into two parts, namely volume (time, manpower, allocated fixed costs and the like) and price (cost per attributable unit of volume). More specifically, the coordinators and/or the staff members of the intervention programme should be asked for information about the issues mentioned in Table Table33 and documents, relevant to the cost structure of these interventions should be studied. Considering the nature of most drug prevention interventions, it will be almost impossible to assign the prevention costs to one specific drug.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to disentangle specific prevention efforts of cannabis use from interventions that, among other things, try to prevent or reduce cannabis use. Direct treatment costs Direct treatment Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries costs can be obtained through surveys questioning workers in the health care sector and patients, and probably also in several databases (e.g. databases of the Rijksinstituut voor ziekte- en invaliditeitsverzekering [RIZIV, the National Institute for Health and Disability Insurance] or the Sickness Funds). However, it needs to be noted that Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries Belgium trails behind in making publicly available anonymous in-formation with regard to the costs for specific treatments.

This arrear is caused by the fragmented character of the Belgian health care sector and the budget administrators, as well as competition between sickness funds, which provide (mandatory basic and additional) health insurance [59]. Indirect productivity costs Indirect productivity Drug_discovery costs also fall into two parts: the volume and price component. On the basis of the average gross labour costs, the price component can be calculated. The volume component, however, is more problematic.