ONE in five Cypriots has tried marijuana at least once, according to yesterday’s presentation of the European report on drugs.
The report, presented by the Cyprus Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction at a press conference yesterday, is under a European umbrella organisation that was set up in 1993 to provide the EU Member States with information on drugs and drug addiction. This is the first time Cyprus data was included.
The study found that there are about 1,400 serious drug users in Cyprus (0.4 per cent of the population), which includes those who use intravenous drugs, cocaine and/or amphetamines. About 75-80 per cent of users consume more than one drug.
Of the 17 deaths that were registered in Cyprus in 2004, nine were due to heroin, three from a mix of heroin and cocaine, and two from cocaine overdoses. From January to May of 2005, heroin directly caused six deaths and indirectly caused two deaths.
The percentage of Cypriot students who have tried cocaine is the lowest in the EU, at almost zero per cent. Also, amphetamine use in Cyprus is relatively low for the European Union.
Cyprus does not yet offer methadone substitution treatment programmes such as those offered in other European countries. Cyprus also lacks any specialised treatment programmes for specific groups of drug users such as cocaine users. There is only one treatment centre in Cyprus for adolescents: Perseus.
The 2005 Annual Report on Drugs, a more general report that covers the entire EU region, found that cocaine use is on the rise in Europe. The EMCDDA estimates that roughly nine million people in the European Union, or three per cent of all adults, have tried cocaine, while about 1.5 million (0.5 per cent of adults) have used it in the past month.
The report found that in Spain and Britain more than four per cent of 15 to 34 year-olds have used cocaine in the last year, a figure that exceeds the percentage using ecstasy and amphetamines and approaches US levels, where the problem has traditionally been greater.
The Cyprus Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction caused an upset in the National Guard when they issued a report several months saying that 18.7 per cent of national guardsmen had tried drugs. In a written announcement the National Guard rejected the findings, saying that they were “without scientific basis.”
Who belongs in that 1/5th? (not me
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