Drug Harm and Dependence

Data from Wikimedia

Implemented with d3 and d3 legend. Source code available on GitHub.

Notes

Motivation: Different kinds of drugs have a different impact, some worse than others.
Goal: Give the viewer an impression on which drugs are more or less dangerous.
Type: A single scatterplot was chosen, because it allows for easy comparison and can express multiple dimensions.
Position: Showing the social and physical harm of taking the drug. The chart is square, because both axes use the same number range. Colors are used at the axes to underline progression from good to bad.
Size: Pleasure is the reason why drugs are taken in the first place. This is shown in size to underline what you get from taking this drug.
Color: A traffic light coloring is used to show psychological and physical dependence, giving a green go for low dependence drugs and a red stop for high dependence drugs.
Tooltip: Detailed numbers on each drug are shown in the tooltip.
Summary: If you want a "good" drug, look for a big green circle in the bottom left.