Talk:List of artists who died of drug-related causes

Um... George Harrison? You're going to include everyone who smoked and died of cancer? Sort of makes it a bizarre list. I think listing everyone who died of heart troubles and had used drugs in the past is a little suspect too, as is listing everyone with AIDS who used drugs. Better, I would think, to restrict the list to people where drug use was listed as the proximate cause of death, rather than as a contributory cause.-- Someone else 01:35 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)
 * I wasn't going to, but George Harrison states outright that the cancer developed because of smoking. Most diseases aren't immediately traceable to something like smoking, but some are -- I don't know if Harrison's is or not, but whoever wrote his article didn't leave any ambiguity. Tokerboy
 * Almost no disease is due to a single factor. 85% of lung cancers occur in smokers. 15% occur in non-smokers. So the article has an 85% chance of being right :) .  -- Someone else 02:17 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)
 * True, and the vast majority of the time it is impossible to tell whether a smoker got cancer due to random chance or due to smoking, but not all cancers are created equal. In a small minority of cases, deaths can be said as unambiguously as anything in medicine to have been caused by drug use; I'm more familiar with alcohol, so to use that as an example, a particular type of liver scarring that can lead to cirrhosis only occurs from alcohol ingestion.  I suppose the question is where to draw the line -- Dennis Wilson, an expert long-distance swimmer, drowned when he was drunk and hopped up on Quaaludes.  I think that's pretty unambiguously a death caused by drugs.  Would you include that, or do you want to include only overdoses?  (Really, I'm willing to go either way, though the websites I collected the names from were often vague, hence I decided to judge it rather liberally)  What about drunk-driving, contracting AIDS from shooting up with dirty needles, accidentally and drunkenly shooting oneself... Maybe the list should be divided into sections for direct overdoses, illnesses exacerbated by drugs, drug-related accidents (and I'd like to add suicides, either in a re-named article or a different one, as I think people often group them together when thinking about this subject). I kind of lean towards sections, as it doesn't delete information, it just organizes it in a more informative way.Tokerboy

The page would be much better if the drug-related causes were listed for each individual. The inclusion of tobacco and alcohol, it seems to me, makes giving the actual causes pretty much imperative. Ortolan88


 * Would you favor including it in captions, or separating in sections? Tokerboy

I think the alphabetical procession with the drug or other cause attached to each name is dramatic, interesting, and moving. I think a separate list of heroin deaths, alcohol deaths, would be depressing. Ortolan88

The cause of death, or comments on the likely cause of death (and reason for inclusion in this list) should always be given, it seems to me. Putting George Harrison in with Lenny Bruce (and they both meant a lot to me) just doesn't seem right without the explanation included. Also, if the article on a person lists one cause of death, or none, and we say drug-related here, it is going to look fishy, regardless of which article is right. So, if you add some information here, you owe it to the Wikipedia to go to the main article to check what it says too. Ortolan88


 * I guess I asked for this, but anyway, here is an excerpt (adapted slightly) from something I put in Talk:Jimi Hendrix:
 * BTW, I really paused and repaused over "choked on his own vomit". Romantics love that stuff, but in fact what happens, as I understand it, is more like drug-induced paralysis of the central nervous system and you die, vomit or not. Take enough barbiturates or other drugs, including alcohol, and you can die hanging over the rail. Wouldn't it be enough to say "died in a barbiturate-induced coma"? "Died in a drug-induced coma?"


 * Ortolan88 04:53 Feb 16, 2003 (UTC)


 * You can die lots of ways from overdosing: aspirating one's vomit is one of them, and decreased respiratory drive is another. The difference (to the dier) is that in the first instance, he'd be trying to breathe, but unable to get air to his lungs, while in the second instance, he'd just stop "trying" to breathe. The difference would be clear at autopsy, but short of that, there may be some "guess-work" involved.  I'm tempted to think, with Ortolan, that this may be a case of "too much info", but if not, it should only be added where we know it's right. (Dunno about Jimi). -- Someone else 05:07 Feb 16, 2003 (UTC)
 * I changed it to respiratory arrest caused by drugs. Anything more specific should be at Jimi Hendrix, not here. Tokerboy
 * It's not just Jimi, it's all those "choked on vomit" entries in this article. I already took care of it for Hendrix, but I thought the note was worth duplicating here, after I removed the Hendrix-specific information.  Still do.  Ortolan88

How about just a "list of dead people" - like a necrology? or a geneology, tree. Then we can subdivide categories, like List:Gun fatalities. (Remember, anyone that Time (Newsweek?) magazine that listed everyone who died of handguns in the USA for 1 week? Like 1100 entries!) Sounds daunting, to say the least. At least, we hope, this list isnt as long as the protonecromicon: A list of people yet to be born and die. Just silly thoughts.-Stevert