This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related letter  • Related article  • Similar articles in this journal  Topic Collections  • Substance Abuse/ Alcoholism  • Alert me on articles by topic

Robert G. Newman, MD, MPH

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 124 words of the full text and any section headings.

It is difficult to understand a survey of injection drug users¹ that ignores "institutionalized persons," including, specifically, prisoners. The comment of the author that the excluded individuals "represent less than 2% of the US population"^1(p166) gives scant comfort. The incarcerated population in the United States numbers more than 2.3 million persons,² and a significant proportion of the inmates are injection drug users.

What could be the reason for excluding a cohort that includes so many of the individuals whose characteristics are being studied—especially when those individuals are, very literally, a captive population?

AUTHOR INFORMATION
Correspondence: Dr Newman, Baron Edmond de Rothschild Chemical Dependency Institute, Beth Israel Medical Center, 555 W 57th St, 18th Floor, New York, NY 10019 (rnewman@icaat.org).

1. Armstrong GL. Injection Drug Users in the United States, 1979-2002. Arch Intern Med. 2007;167(2):166-173. FREE FULL TEXT 2. Harrison PM, Beck AJ. US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 2005. Washington, DC: US Dept of Justice; November 2006:1.

Arch Intern Med. 2007;167(16):1807.

RELATED LETTER

Prisoners (Should) Count—Reply
Gregory L. Armstrong
Arch Intern Med. 2007;167(16):1807-1808.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

RELATED ARTICLE

Injection Drug Users in the United States, 1979-2002: An Aging Population
Gregory L. Armstrong
Arch Intern Med. 2007;167(2):166-173.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT