Irish students take more drugs than average survey
By Nuala Haughey

Irish students drink more, get drunk more and smoke more than the typical
European student, a comprehensive new survey shows. They also take more
illegal drugs, including cannabis, than the average European student,
according to the study, which is the first of its kind across Europe.

The European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs, which has
been seen by The Irish Times, was carried out among 50,000 16yearold
students in 26 countries.

It follows a report earlier this week by the European Monitoring Centre for
Drugs and Drug Addiction in Portugal which also highlighted the extent of
drug use among Irish teenagers and used figures supplied from the school
survey report. Twothirds (66 per cent) of Irish students in that survey
said they had been drunk in the last 12 months, compared to an average of
48 per cent among students from the 26 countries.

Seventy per cent of students in the UK said they had been drunk in the last
12 months.

Two out of five (41 per cent) of Irish students said they had smoked in the
last month, the secondhighest figure from all the countries surveyed and 9
percentage points above the average.

Almost two out of five (37 per cent) of Irish students said they had used
cannabis, compared to a European average of 12 per cent. Sixteen per cent
said they had used other illicit drugs, compared to an average of 4 per
cent. The figure on cannabis use among students was included in this week's
monitoring centre report.

The countries in the school survey report were Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech
Republic, Denmark, Estonia, the Faroe Islands, Finland, Hungary, Iceland,
Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Norway, Poland, Portugal,
Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine and the UK. France, Germany and
the Netherlands were not included in the survey for financial and
administrative reasons.

The school survey research in Ireland was funded by the Department of
Health and carried out by Dr Mark Morgan, a psychologist at St Patrick's
College, Dublin. He surveyed almost 1,900 16yearold students from 80
schools in 1995.

He said the findings were of concern. "While a lot of people have given a
good deal of attention to illegal drugs, it remains the case that the main
problem in Europe is legal drugs like cigarettes and alcohol, and this is
especially the case among teenagers in Ireland." The study was coordinated
by the Swedish Council for Information on Alcohol and Other Drugs and
partly funded by the Council of Europe.