On 18 May 2017, Blanchardstown Local Drug and Alcohol Task Force (BLDATF) launched its report Drug and alcohol trends monitoring system (DATMS) 2017: Year 2.¹ BLADTF started the DATMS in 2015 to ensure they had a ‘thorough, comprehensive and deep knowledge of the problems of the [Dublin 15] area’ (p. 3) upon which to base decisions about service provision. This is the second annual report from the system.^2,3 The system was designed to identify trends in patterns of drug use, and the authors caution that this requires three years of data. Therefore, any changes identified in the current report will require further investigation in the next rounds of data collection.

Cannabis is the most widely used illicit drug in Europe and worldwide.¹ While increased mortality rates are not associated with cannabis use, a number of very serious and long-term negative health problems are correlated with regular and long-term cannabis use. These include dependence, mental illness, cognitive impairment, cardiovascular disease and pulmonary disorders, including lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.²

This article examines trends in drug law offences between 2003 and 2016. Crime data, which are collated on the PULSE system by An Garda Síochána, are provided to the Central Statistics Office (CSO) for analysis. An incident may consist of more than one criminal offence. A primary offence or detection may refer to one offence within an incident. Sometimes, a charged offence may be different from the offence originally identified in the incident. Nevertheless, incidents are a useful indicator of the level of particular types of criminal activities.¹ Figure 1 shows the available statistics for recorded incidents of drug offences between 2003 and 2016, as entered on the PULSE system by Gardaí.

In September 2016, An Garda Síochána (AGS) and the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) published their biannual cross-border organised crime threat assessment.¹ The aim of the report was to provide insight into how criminal activity orchestrated by organised crime groups (OCGs), North and South of the border, is disrupted by the work of the Cross Border Joint Agency Task Force (CBJATF). The CBJATF involves interagency engagement between the PSNI, AGS, Revenue, HM Revenue & Customs and other agencies, such as the National Crime Agency and the Criminal Assets Bureau.

People who inject drugs (PWID) represent the majority of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) epidemic in the developed world.¹ The majority of new infections develop in active PWID, with this group accounting for more than 80% of new infections in high-income countries.² Furthermore, an additional large reservoir of infection exists among former PWID who remain undiagnosed.

The first Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children (HBSC) survey was conducted in Ireland in 1998 and has been repeated every four years since then. In 2014, the study was conducted in Ireland for the fifth time. This survey included 13,611 children drawn from 3rd class in primary school through to 5th year in post-primary school; 230 primary and post-primary schools across Ireland participated. Data were collected on general health, social class, smoking, use of alcohol and other substances, food and dietary behaviour, exercise and physical activity, self-care, injuries, bullying and sexual health behaviours. This article presents findings from a 2017 report which examined trends in alcohol, tobacco and cannabis use among 10—17-year-old children between 1998 and 2014.¹

According to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) annual report for 2017 on estimates of drug use in the European Union (EU),¹ cocaine is the most commonly used illicit stimulant drug in Europe. It is estimated that 17.5 million European adults (aged 15—64 years), or 5.2% of this age group, have experimented with cocaine at some time in their lives. Among these are about 2.3 million young adults aged 15 to 34 years (1.9% of this age group) who have used the drug in the last year. Only Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom (UK) report last-year prevalence of cocaine use among young adults of 2.5% or more.¹ The 2014/15 general population survey reported that 2.9% of young Irish adults had used cocaine in the last year.² Around one million seizures of illicit drugs are reported annually in Europe. Cocaine is the second most commonly seized drug (after cannabis). In total, around 87,000 seizures of cocaine were reported in the EU in 2015. Both the number of cocaine seizures and the quantity seized increased between 2014 and 2015 in Europe.¹