Credit: ec.europa.eu
Luxembourg’s Ministry of Health and Social Security has announced that the Grand Duchy is once again participating in this year's European Web Survey on Drugs aimed at assessing the use of drugs.
“Do you use drugs? How much? How often?” are among the questions from the European Web Survey on Drugs 2024 (EWSD), launched on Thursday 20 June by the Luxembourg Focal Point for Drugs and Drug Addiction (PFLDT) with the support of the European Union Drugs Agency (EMCDDA).
This year, the European survey is being rolled out nationally in 36 countries in Europe and close to Europe. As in previous years, member organisations of the Reitox network, the European information network on drugs and drug addiction, are carrying out this study. In Luxembourg, the local observatory for drugs and drug addictions, PFLDT, will supervise this survey for six weeks and will promote it through targeted advertisements on social networks to solicit as many respondents as possible.
This survey is aimed at all drug users, aged eighteen and over, who wish to share relevant information on their consumption in a simple and completely anonymous manner. It aims to improve the understanding of consumption patterns, and the estimation of the size of the market on the national and European levels and in doing so, it will contribute to the development of action plans, preventive measures and public policies in this area, in Europe and Luxembourg.
The survey is voluntary and constitutes one of the cutting-edge methods in terms of population monitoring, the ministry noted. It is structured into different modules which address socio-demographic aspects, consumption patterns and habits, and accessibility to psychoactive substances (price and volumes), focusing more on cannabis. The conclusions of this survey could thus help to fuel discussions around the new law on cannabis.
The survey is available in French, German and English and takes approximately five to ten minutes to complete. Although online surveys are not necessarily representative of the general population, they can, when carefully conducted and combined with traditional data collection methods, present a more detailed and realistic picture of consumption and drug markets.
To date, four rounds of the European Drug Survey have been implemented, involving 33 countries and more than 150,000 respondents.
Publication of the 2024 European Drugs Report
At the initiative of the European Union Drugs Agency (EMCDDA), the annual report on drugs was published on 11 June.
High-strength synthetic substances, new drug mixtures and changing consumption patterns pose a growing threat in Europe. These issues were among the most important raised in this report, the ministry stressed.
In this context, the Ministry of Health and Social Security noted it would like to encourage the general population to respond to this survey and to invite volunteer respondents to go to the dedicated Facebook page: all the details including the link to the survey are available there.
