What are country overviews?
Country overviews provide a structured synopsis of the trends and characteristics of national drug problems. They consist of a summary of the national drug situation, key statistics at a glance and a barometer showing the drug use prevalence position of each country.
Situation summary
Situation summaries present brief information in 13 different areas (drugs prevalence, prevention, harm reduction, drug laws etc.). They are available for the EU,
A detailed analysis of the drug situation in each country can be found in the EMCDDA's national reports written by the national focal point (80-100 pages per report).
For EU Member States,
Overviews for countries from the former Soviet Union have been produced within the framework of regional projects financed by the European Commission programme for the Technical Assistance to the Community of Independent States (TACIS), and implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) (last update: 2008). More >>
Data sheet
The data sheets for each country provide a quick reference for 42 key statistics relating to the drugs field. They are drawn from the Statistical bulletin tables and collated for each country individually. They allow a rapid overview assessment of any one country.
These key statistics include:
- lifetime and last year prevalence figures for adults and young adults for cannabis and cocaine, and lifetime prevalence figures for school students
- rate per 1 000 population of problem and injecting drug users
- percentage of drug users infected with HIV, HCV and HBV (national data only, local data are available in the 2011 Statistical bulletin), and HIV infections newly diagnosed in injecting drug users
- number of drug-related deaths
- drug law offences overall, for use/possession and for cannabis
- number of drug users entering treatment for opioids, cocaine and cannabis
- numbers of syringes exchanged and distributed, and number of drug users in substitution treatment
- prices for cannabis, cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and amphetamine
- purity of cocaine, heroin (brown), cannabis resin and cannabis herbal.
The EU picture
The final columns on the data sheet give information not about the country itself but about the overall EU situation for each item of information. These columns show for each item the lowest and highest values reported across the EU countries. When positioning the individual country within the EU overall it should be remembered that not all countries provide data for each item every year. The spread shown as the EU range is therefore not always for the current year only, but more often is spread over a range of recent years, using the most recently available data from all countries. The spread of years for each item is given in the (numerical) footnotes.
Barometer
The figures show a simplified graphical presentation of the patterns of prevalence of drug use for each country (left-hand figure), and the position of the country in an overall rating of reporting countries (right-hand figure).
The diagrams summarise the most recent information over the past five years (2005 to 2009) provided to the EMCDDA. In some cases, data are not available for the country and in other cases, where alternative estimates of prevalence are available for the same year, this is indicated.
The presentations are intended only as quick reference diagrams and should be used in conjunction with the cautionary notes on comparisons and limitations due to methodological and definitional differences in data collection procedures, to avoid misleading interpretations.
The rating maps each country's prevalence level onto a scale of 1 (representing the lowest) to 100 (representing the highest) prevalences across all reporting countries. The number of countries reporting generally differs from prevalence to prevalence and is stated in the diagram. Date of data collection is also shown.
Prevalence of drug use for the last year reported (LYP) and for lifetime prevalence (LTP) are give per 1 000 people (or students in the case of school surveys), except for cannabis and inhalants/volatiles. The prevalence of these drugs is given per 100 people (or students), to accommodate the information on the same scaled diagram. For problem drug use (PDU) the reported figure is generally equivalent to a one-year prevalence rate.
All estimates are subject to sampling and reporting errors, and in the case of the general population surveys confidence intervals are not reported to the EMCDDA at present, but the sample sizes are given in the tables cited as an indication of estimation reliability; for school surveys, refer to the cited tables and the ESPAD source publication.
For the full information on which the displayed data are based, refer to Tables GPS-2, EYE-10, PDU-1. For references and methods refer to Tables EYE-0, GPS-0, GPS-1 and PDU-0.
Notes on school surveys
The prevalence data presented for schools surveys are for 15/16 year old school students obtained from national surveys. The notes indicate, in some cases, that the surveys are limited to specified regions.
Caution is required comparing figures due to methodological limitations. For methods and definitions see 'Studies of youth and the schools populations — methods and definitions'.
The data on school pupils are almost exclusively derived from ESPAD surveys (The European school survey project on alcohol and other drugs). The sample sizes and other information are given in Statistical bulletin Tables EYE-0 and EYE-11. For further details on the ESPAD survey, see http://www.espad.org.
Notes on general population surveys of all adults
The results for the last surveys available in each country are presented in the diagram. In the case of the general population surveys, confidence intervals are not reported to the EMCDDA at present, but the sample sizes are given in the Table GPS-1 as an indication of estimation reliability. In surveys with small sample sizes, results should be interpreted with caution.
Note that cannabis and cocaine use prevalence refers to the drugs in any form. For methods and definitions on population surveys in general, see ‘Prevalence and patterns of drug use in the general population — methods and definitions’.
See also ‘General notes for interpreting data’ on the Explanatory notes and help page.
Countries report, as far as possible, data for EMCDDA standard age groups (all adults: 15–64, young adults: 15–34). See Tables GPS-2 and GPS-8 for details of the precise age groups covered by the surveys. For full information of all surveys available for each country, see Table GPS-1, for details of bibliographic references of each survey see Table GPS-0.
Notes on problem drug use estimates
The range of estimation (either from confidence interval or sensitivity analysis) is not shown in the diagrams; estimates may be made by different methods in different countries. Midpoints of ranges have been calculated in cases where no central estimate was provided to facilitate interpretation and comparisons. The ranges reported may have arisen either from confidence intervals or from a sensitivity analysis.
See Table PDU-1 for details. For further details on data sources, methods and other comments see tables Table PDU-102. See Table PDU-0 for details of bibliographic references.
TACIS
Taking into consideration that the methods, the quality of the data collection and the reporting procedures in the countries of the former Soviet Union may differ from the standards being developed at European level by the EMCDDA in cooperation with the European Commission and the Member States, the EMCDDA can therefore take no responsibility or liability for any consequences arising from the use of the data contained in these overviews.
The contents of these summaries do not necessarily reflect the official opinions of the EMCDDA’s partners, the EU Member States or any institution or agency of the European Union or European Communities.
EMCDDA–CARDS project
Objective 32 of the EU drugs action plan 2005–08 foresees that particular efforts must be made to improve assistance given to applicant countries, potential applicants or those affected by the neighbourhood policy in order to implement the acquis in this area. Such efforts include technical assistance and the signing of appropriate agreements with the countries concerned.
On 1 December 2007, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) initiated a technical cooperation and assistance project with the Western Balkans countries — comprising Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia — financed by the European Commission’s regional Community Assistance for Reconstruction, Development and Stabilisation (CARDS) fund. The aim of the project is to assess the capacity of the Western Balkans countries to establish a drug information system that is compatible with the EMCDDA, and to provide direct support for data collection and reporting.
During this first cooperation project with the Western Balkans, the EMCDDA and the Reitox coaches assisted the partner countries in drafting a first Country overview following the European standards. A Reitox academy training session was organised in Belgrade in October 2008 and working groups were set up. These groups have drawn on the information currently available at national level to produce Country overviews that provide a structured synopsis of the trends and characteristics of the drug problems in each country.
