Fig. 1

Smoothed shaded contour plot of age-specific crude drug-related death rates per 100,000 population in Scotland for single age and birth year by sex*. * Single age is from 18 to 49 years and birth year from 1933 to 1992. The colour and contour labels indicate the number of drug-related deaths per 100,000 for each single age and year. Green vertical dashed guidelines indicate birth cohorts 1960 (left most line), 1970 and 1980 (right most line) and dashed-dotted guidelines mid-decadal birth cohorts 1965 and 1975. Red diagonal dashed guideline indicates calendar year 1990. The three most recent and three oldest years and ages have been removed from the figure to avoid giving the impression trends are falling at the end due to an artefact of smoothing