An EU survey has detected relatively low drug use among Maltese youngsters even though it seems that if they want to, those aged between 15 and 24 years know exactly how to get hold of illicit substances.
The use of synthetic drugs – legal substances that imitate the effects of drugs like cocaine and ecstasy – is also on the low side.
Five per cent of youths in the EU said they had taken psychoactive substances at least once in the previous month but in Malta this was the case with only 0.3 per cent of respondents – the lowest level among member states.
Other countries with a low use of these substances – which are becoming more popular particularly in the European clubbing scene – were found to be Italy (0.8 per cent) and Finland (one per cent).
With regard to “real” drugs, the trend is similar. Only 7.8 per cent of the Maltese admitted to having taken cannabis in the 30 days before the survey. This contrasts sharply with the EU’s average of 26 per cent who said they had taken cannabis at least once in the previous month.
The Eurobarometer survey, published in Brussels yesterday, was carried out by Misco in May among a sample of 257 Maltese aged 15 to 24 years.
The low drug use among Malta’s young people, as the survey indicates, is definitely not the result of lack of availability.
Asked how easy it was for them to get hold of different types of drugs in less than 24 hours, 39 per cent said it was easy to obtain cannabis, 22 per cent said it was no problem to buy cocaine and 21 per cent said they knew how and where to get hold of ecstasy.
The least common drug, although still relatively accessible, seems to be heroin, with 15 per cent describing as “easy” the task of getting their hands on the substance in less than a day.
In the EU, 57 per cent of respondents believe they can easily obtain cannabis within 24 hours, while only 22 per cent said the same for ecstasy or cocaine.
For the five per cent of young EU citizens who admitted to using synthetic drugs, the main sources were friends (54 per cent), at parties or in clubs (37 per cent), in specialist shops (33 per cent) or over the internet (seven per cent).
One in three young European men (32 per cent) admitted to having used cannabis at least once in their lifetime compared to one in five young women (20 per cent).
Europeans aged 15 to 24 make a clear distinction between cannabis and other illicit drugs, both in terms of availability and health effects. Overall, far more young people consider cocaine (95 per cent) and ecstasy (92 per cent) as posing a higher health risk to regular users than cannabis (67 per cent), compared to 57 per cent for alcohol.
Among those young people who never used cannabis, 75 per cent thought its regular use would pose a high risk, compared to 36 per cent of those who have used the drug in the past year.