ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the question of drug toxicity, a major problem for the pharmacoepidemiologist. Increasingly both in the United States, in Europe and in Australasia drug abuse causes alarm and despondency amongst policymakers, who see no way of controlling the epidemic. The association between drug abuse and the AIDS complex increases concern, producing a general feeling of impotence as people fail to see any obvious way to stop the crisis getting quite out of hand. In parallel with this concern about drug abuse and its consequences, the public is increasingly exposed to reports of new suspected adverse drug reactions which are treated in a most irresponsible way by the media. For a few drugs which have been around for a long time, people have reasonably good information about their long-term safety. Pharmacoepidemiology must be a live and contemporary subject providing answers to problems of drug use and drug safety in real time.
