IT WAS all of seven years ago that Francois Mitterrand leaned over his desk and scratched his name along the bottom of a letter to other European leaders, suggesting the time had come to assess the EU's drug problem.
He was right. But he could not have guessed that despite widespread agreement within the EU, and the establishment of a European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, it would still be almost impossible for anyone to make a realistic and up to date comparison of drug abuse levels in member states in 1996.
The monitoring centre recently held an open day at its headquarters in Lisbon, Portugal, to say it was making progress and to promise that useful analysis would be available soon.
The centre and its staff of 25, firmly established in a refurbished building on a hill overlooking the port, are preparing a report on EU drug use to be published in September. Scientific staff arrived only last autumn, so the report will be limited to a broad picture of drug abuse trends across the EU. But the gaps will be the most telling aspect.
They will illustrate the difficulties the centre has found in reconciling a mass of incompatible data - from official and private agencies, from reliable and more dubious sources - and the battle it faces to make national governments and agencies produce meaningful information.
For example, somewhere in the mountain of paper there is an assessment of drug abuse among the EU's schoolchildren. There's a list showing results of a survey in member states, running from the highest to the lowest level of drug use. Where does the Republic feature? Have we fewer schoolchildren on drugs than the Dutch? Are we doing better than the French?
In fact, the Republic does not feature, because like Italy and Germany, it has yet to carry out a national survey in schools. A survey has been done in Dublin but that data cannot be compared because drug use in cities is so much higher than in less built up areas.
There are scores of such anomalies. How do you compare the level of heroin addiction in Dublin and Barcelona? Each city may have done a survey, but did it study the same type of people, or did the questionnaires carry the same questions? Are there different ways of measuring drug related deaths? Does the number of people in drug treatment tell the full story, or do some countries fail to count the number forced to wait because the clinics are full?
Sometimes the researchers can only hope to make estimates or identify trends. They say they are coping with varying degrees of cooperation from member states, but point out that the Irish are among the most helpful.
The work of the centre, however, makes it clear that despite the age of the European Community and the convergence of some practices, member states have continued to do some things in their own ways. This is particularly true of health related surveys, because each country wants its next set of figures to be comparable with its last. And it is asking a lot of a national government or agency to amend its method of data collection because there is now a computer in an office on a sunny hill in Lisbon which can't understand the old ways.
According to the head of the centre's epidemiology department, Mr Richard Hartnoll, the incomplete picture so far assembled means it is too early to make definitive statements about the drugs problem across the EU.
"It's rather like placing an elephant in front of a group of blind people and asking them to say what it is," he says. "One takes hold of the trunk and says `oh, this is a snake'. Another grabs an ear and says `it must be a flatfish' Another holds a leg and says `it's a treetrunk'. They can't say what it is because they each only have one part of the beast."
The centre's director, Mr Georges Estievenart, agrees member states are "in confusion" about the extent of drug use and ways to combat it. The centre has however, made great progress given that it was only finally launched last year, he says.
As he outlines the continuing challenge of reconciling the member states' varying data collection methods, the obvious question is posed: surely progress would be far more rapid if the centre carried out its own surveys and studies across the EU? He responds by saying it is important that member states make their own contribution to anything emanating from the centre.
"It will probably be more difficult for them to misuse information provided by themselves in conjunction with others," he says.
So, given the limitations, what can be said about drug trends in Europe? Cannabis is the most popular drug, with increases in use in many countries. One survey from the early 1990s showed 25 per cent of Dublin school children aged 12 to 18 admitting they had tried cannabis. It is expected that this will prove in the highest range when a study of drug use in cities is completed.
It may emerge closest to the figure for Amsterdam (where 30 per cent of 16 to 19 year olds said they had used the drug), despite the far more liberal Dutch regime. However, the number of Dublin children who indicated they used the drug in the previous year is not high, suggesting the earlier figure points more towards experimentation than continuing use.
Dublin will probably also show one of the highest ratings for solvent abuse - glue sniffing - of all the EU cities. Typically, about 6 per cent of all children have tried it by the age of 15. But a survey of 12 to 18 year olds in Dublin produced a figure of 19 per cent.
Despite the concern it causes in the Republic, the heroin problem in Dublin will probably prove to be of average scale compared to other EU cities.
Improving the comparability of data is vital if anything worthwhile is to emerge from the centre and its £6 million annual budget. Without a clear picture of EU drug use trends, it will be impossible for policymakers to determine which law enforcement or demand reduction measures are having an effect, and which are failing. But once that picture emerges, Mr Hartnoll says, "it will he possible to move on to examine in more detail the more fundamental questions of and How? and What works?"