Drug use among young people in Ireland is not as high as a UN report stated last week, according to the authors of a further study on the prevalence of drug use published yesterday.
The UN report said young Irish people were the biggest abusers of amphetamines and ecstasy in Europe.
However, yesterday's first all-Ireland study of drug use commissioned jointly by the National Advisory Committee on Drugs (NACD) in the Republic and the Drug and Alcohol Information and Research Unit in Northern Ireland found the use of these drugs was much higher in the Netherlands and Britain. Amphetamine use was also higher in Denmark and Norway than here, according to its findings. Dr Hamish Sinclair of the NACD and the Health Research Board, said the UN report had used data from surveys conducted in 1995, 1998 and 1999, whereas yesterday's research was based on data collected between October 2002 and April 2003.
He said the data for the UN study was "several years out of date" and different methodologies had also been used, with the most recent study having involved face-to-face interviews.
Dr Sinclair also said the latest research put Ireland's position in terms of drug use as "middle of the road, slightly higher for some drugs but not for all". It surveyed 8,442 people aged 15 to 64. Some 4,925 of them were in the Republic, the remainder in the North. It found one in five had used illegal drugs; one in 18 had used them during the last year and one in 33 had used them over the past month.
Younger age groups showed higher drug use with more than one in four or 28 per cent of those in the 25-34 age group saying they had ever used an illegal drug. When questioned about drug use over the past 12 months, those aged 15-24 had the highest prevalence rates for most illegal drugs.
The most commonly used drug was cannabis at 18 per cent. The proportion of people found to be using magic mushrooms, LSD, ecstasy, amphetamines, poppers and cocaine was between 3 and 4 per cent. Only 0.4 per cent of the sample were found to have used heroin and just 0.3 per cent reported using crack.
Twice as many men as women were using cannabis and three times more men than women were using LSD.
However, far more women then men were using sedatives, anti-depressants and tranquillisers. The researchers, who have not yet analysed all the data, say they will look further to see if these drugs were prescribed or not. They will also publish data on regional variations on drug use at a later stage.
In general prevalence rates in Northern Ireland were similar to the Republic. However, lifetime ecstasy use was higher in the North than South at 6 per cent and 4 per cent respectively, while lifetime cocaine use was higher in the South than North at 3 per cent and 1.7 per cent respectively. Dr Des Corrigan, chairperson of the NACD, said it was not at all reassuring to say Ireland was in "the middle of the table" rather than at the top when its drug use was compared to that of other EU countries. It showed there was still work to be done in terms of "tweaking" initiatives which had been put in place to target drug users and encourage them away from drugs, he said.
Furthermore, he said it was worrying that 25 per cent of the 15-24 age group was experimenting with cannabis.
"We know from international research that about one in 10 of those who experiment with cannabis end up losing control over their usage," he said, adding "we need to get that percentage down."
However, he said the data showed young people who may feel under peer pressure to get involved in drug use that "everybody is not doing it".