August 24, 2026
“The outcome here is a death certificate rather than a craving score, and it shows that a patient admitted to a narcology ward carries three times the all-cause mortality of a low-risk drinker, with a modelled ninefold for external causes that rests on 20 deaths and a very wide confidence interval, from 2.63 to 33.3.”
“The outcome here is an admission recorded by a national register rather than anything a patient or a clinician rated, and the deaths of 4,565 people in the cohort were used to end observation rather than counted as an outcome.”
“The trial is called Screen, Treat and Retain, and retention in methadone treatment is neither among the outcomes it reports nor among the sixteen it registered: what it reports is methamphetamine-negative urine, twice a week, for 25 weeks.”
“After page 12 the report gives no mortality figure at all: not in the results, not in the overview, not in the conclusion, not in the appendices.”
“The waiver disappeared and the share of newly diagnosed adults given buprenorphine moved from 18.8% to 19.6%, while retention, overdose and death were not measured at all.”
“The programme counts completions, preceptors and prescribers; its own report measures neither retention in treatment nor overdoses nor deaths, and names retention once, among next year's plans.”