الفهرس 
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Abstract
Introduction: Substance use has been implicated as a contributing factor to nearly all types of injury. The reported prevalence of substance use in homicides, suicides and interpersonal violence varies from 39% to 86%. Drugs are related to crime through the effects they have on the user<U+2019>s behavior and by generating violence and other illegal activity in connection with drug trafficking. Material and Methods: The present study was carried out on 100 post mortem forensic cases, which had been autopsied in the area covered by Port Said medicolegal department, in the period between May 2003 and January 2005. Thin Layer Chromatography (T.L.C) was used in the present study to detect the presence of the drugs of abuse searched for (opiates, cannabis, barbiturates and benzodiazepine). Results: Fortyfour percentages of cases were drug positive, 41 % were positive for one drug while 3 % were positive for two drugs. The most common detected drug was cannabinoids (43.1 %) followed by opiates (36.3 %) and benzodiazepines (27.2 %). Most of the drug positive cases for cannabinoids were homicidal (23.7 %) and accidental (22.2 %) whereas most of the opiate positive cases were suicidal (20.7 %). Among the drug positive cases; 44.2 % were males and 42.9 % were females. There was insignificant variation as regard sex distribution. Most of the drug positive cases were young (46.3 % aged below 40 year compared to 39.4 % aged 40 year or more). The percentage of drug positive cases was 51.9 % from Port Said; 48.1 % from North Sinai and 37 % from Ismailia. As regard the causes of death, 44.9 % of traumatic deaths were drug positive versus 40.9 % of nontraumatic deaths. There was no statistically significant difference between the two groups. Of homicidal autopsied cases, 45.8 % were drug positive (21.7 % were positive for cannabis; 8.6 % were positive for benzodiazepines and 4.3 % were positive for opiates). Among suicidal deaths, 41.3 % of cases were drug positive (20.7 % were positive for opiates; 10.3 % were positive for cannabis and 10.3 % were positive for benzodiazepines). Although the accidental manner of death in the present study was only 9 %, the drug positive cases were 55.6 %. On the other hand, the pathological deaths were only 3 % but the drug positive cases were 33.3 %. All cases of accidental deaths due to pedestrian traffic accidents and 75 % of deaths due to falling from height were drug positive. nclusions: It can be concluded that TLC is a useful method for detection of drugs of detection of drugs of abuse extracted from the od and or urine samples of the autopsied cases. Cannabis was the most prevalent drug among the forensic autopsied cases lowed by opiates and benzodiazepines.