Introductory note and acknowledgements

This report is based on information provided to the EMCDDA by the EU Member States, the candidate country Turkey, and Norway in the form of a national reporting package.

The purpose of the current report is to prove an overview and summary of the European drug situation and responses to it. The statistical data reported here relate to 2015 (or the last year available). Analysis of trends is based only on those countries providing sufficient data to describe changes over the period specified. Statistical significance is tested at the 0.05 level, unless otherwise stated. The reader should also be aware that monitoring patterns and trends in a hidden and stigmatised behaviour such as drug use is both practically and methodologically challenging.

For this reason, multiple sources of data are used for the purposes of analysis in this report. Although considerable improvements can be noted, both nationally and in respect to what is possible to achieve in a European level analysis, the methodological difficulties in this area must be acknowledged. Caution is therefore required in interpretation, in particular when countries are compared on any single measure. Caveats and qualifications relating to the data are to be found in the online version of this report and in the Statistical Bulletin, where detailed information on methodology, qualifications on analysis and comments on the limitations in the information set available can be found. Information is also available on the methods and data used for European level estimates, where interpolation may be used.

The EMCDDA would like to thank the following for their help in producing this report:

  • the heads of the Reitox national focal points and their staff;
  • the services and experts within each Member State that collected the raw data for this report;
  • the members of the Management Board and the Scientific Committee of the EMCDDA;
  • the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union — in particular its Horizontal Working Party on Drugs — and the European Commission;
  • the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and Europol;
  • the Pompidou Group of the Council of Europe, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the WHO Regional Office for Europe, Interpol, the World Customs Organisation, the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD), the Sewage Analysis Core Group Europe (SCORE), the European Drug Emergencies Network (Euro-DEN);
  • the Translation Centre for the Bodies of the European Union and the Publications Office of the European Union.
Reitox national focal points
Reitox is the European information network on drugs and drug addiction. The network is comprised of national focal points in the EU Member States, the candidate country Turkey, Norway and at the European Commission. Under the responsibility of their governments, the focal points are the national authorities providing drug information to the EMCDDA. The contact details of the national focal points may be found on the EMCDDA website.
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