Treated drug misuse in Ireland: national report 1996

The report addresses treated drug misuse in Ireland. The findings are based on information gained from the National Drug Treatment Reporting System. All contacts receiving treatment from participating centres for their problem drug taking in 1996 are reported to the System. Treatment was provided by a range of statutory and voluntary agencies. This database is maintained by the Drugs Research Division of the Health Research Board. The main findings were:
* The total number of contacts receiving treatment for drug misuse during 1996 was 4865, most of these were resident in the Eastern Health Board area
* The number who entered treatment for drug misuse for the first time in 1996 was 2041 persons
* Almost three-quarters of clients were male
* Most clients, 96%, were between 15 and 39 years old; almost two thirds were under 25 years of age
* Almost seven out of ten lived with their parental family and proportionately more women than men were living with a drug misusing partner
* Almost a quarter of contacts treated for drug misuse lived in the inner city of Dublin
* Fifty-eight percent had left school on or before the official schoolleaving age of 15
* Eighty-three percent of contacts treated for drug misuse were unemployed
* Two out of five had taken a drug, other than alcohol, before the age of 15 years
* Heroin was the main drug of misuse in the Eastern Health Board area; cannabis and ecstasy featured more commonly in other health board areas
* The percentage of those treated for heroin use has doubled in the period 1990 to 1996
* In Dublin there is a trend towards more smoking and less injecting of the misusers' main drug