The Parliament of the European Union just published a fun little report detailing EU’s drug use statistics. The global drug trade relies on the countries of Europe for both supply and demand of the product. The results are relatively predictable, if not somewhat encouraging. Much to leaders’ relief I’m sure, weed is in and heroin is so 2007. The actual research was conducted by the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) although I’d much rather picture a distinguished European Parliament member knocking on the door of some unsuspecting Spaniard, “Excuse me, I’m from the government, what controlled substances are you enjoying recreationally these days?” Alas, this was not the case.
Pick Your Poison
According to the study, of those surveyed aged 15 to 64 (a pretty wide range that includes non-adults, which seems noteworthy), 23.3% said they’ve used marijuana at least once. Okay, if these statistics include those who have only tried a drug once, they all of a sudden seem less legit. Maybe the researchers were using the “say yes, even if you only tried it once years ago” tactic in order to keep people honest? They do get a little more detailed and claim 1% are using weed daily. I think we all know it’s greater than that; according to this same study, 80% of all drug confiscations in the European Union are for cannabis, but let’s go with it.
The one-timers were also included in the grilling about cocaine. 4.6% admitted trying coke but most designated it a drug for special occasions. If the news in recent years is any indicator, I’d venture to say the bulk of those respondents were Brits. Ecstasy came in a 3.6% and amphetamines were just slightly less at 3.5%. They only drug where the report identified “problem users” was heroin/opioids and the percentage was extremely low at .4%. The number of estimated problematic heroin abusers is 1.3 million people. This number might seem large but the usage has actually declined significantly over the past few years. The amount of people who have sought treatment for opiate addiction since 2007 has decreased by 50%. Of course, the EMCDDA specifies injection of heroin for this category. There are other factors to consider, such as the use of synthetic opioids and the overuse of other prescription medication.
Moving Forward with 420 and Other
I guess you could say Europe is losing its edge because overall, these numbers seem pretty low—especially again considering that many of the respondents were supposedly not chronic users. It will be interesting to see how cannabis popularity ebbs and flows as individual European countries grapple with the increasing pressure of Western culture to decriminalize the stuff. Of the top ten countries most avidly supporting the movement to fully legalize marijuana, only three are European.
Marijuana seems to be holding firm as the predominant drug of choice with no signs of drastically changing. Heroin losing its luster is certainly promising but the synthetic drug market’s foothold is obviously not. Either way, reports like these are keeping the citizenry aware and the leaders informed on where their prevention and education efforts should be directed.
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