Amphetamine, ecstasy and cocaine: typology of users, availability and consumption estimates

Abstract

To explore the European drug market from the demand side, we conducted web surveys in seven selected EU Member States (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden and the United Kingdom) among last year users of (meth) amphetamine, ecstasy and cocaine. These users provided us with information on quantitative and qualitative aspects of their drug use such as their frequency of use and usual locations of purchase and use, thus offering us a window on patterns of drug use and availability. On the basis of past year use frequency, we divided users of each drug into three user type groups of infrequent (less than 11 use days), occasional (11-50 use days) and frequent (51-365 use days) users. We present findings per Member State as a whole and, wherever sample size allows, separately per user type. Our typology shows that infrequent users comprise the largest group for each drug and that the amount consumed on a typical use day increases with increasing frequency of use. We also estimated total annual consumption of (meth)amphetamine in the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Sweden, and of ecstasy and cocaine in the Netherlands on the basis of the user type distinction. To this end, we calculated mean individual annual consumption within each user type group and combined these figures with absolute numbers of users of each type derived from general and targeted population survey data to arrive at estimates of total annual consumption. Individual annual consumption was higher among occasional than infrequent users and was highest among frequent users. In terms of total annual consumption, the smallest group of frequent users is responsible for the largest part of the total estimated amounts of each drug consumed. We discuss and compare our estimates to those from previous drug market research.