Europe’s schoolchildren are drinking and smoking less than their predecessors, but illicit drug use remains at “high levels”, a new study published Tuesday shows.
“Smoking and drinking among 15- and 16-year-old school students are showing signs of decline, but there are concerns over challenges posed by new drugs and new addictive behaviours,” according to the study published by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction.
“Positive developments” were seen across the board in the case of teenage smoking, against a backdrop of anti-smoking measures introduced by governments over the last two decades.
More than half the respondents said they had never smoked, while less than a quarter reported they were current smokers, the sixth European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD) showed.
Daily smoking continues to be more prevalent among boys, but the gender gap has narrowed since the first such survey was taken 20 years ago.
While alcohol use among adolescents in Europe dropped, it remains high with 81 per cent of the children questioned having drunk alcohol as opposed to 89 per cent in 1995, according to the survey of over 96,000 schoolchildren across Europe.
“Heavy episodic drinking (binge drinking) remains a concern,” the study found.
Eighteen per cent of students reported having used an illicit drug at least once in their life, a level largely unchanged since 2003 according to the study, but levels varied considerably across the countries surveyed.
In the Czech Republic, 37 percent of the students reported having used any illicit drug at least once.
Particularly low levels, 10 percent or less, of illicit drug use were noted in Albania, Cyprus, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Ukraine, among others.
The most common drug used was cannabis.Children who face severe adversities are at increased risk of getting involved in drug abuse and various addictions like alcohol in adulthood, says a new study.
The findings showed that children who had experienced domestic violence between their parents were at 50 percent higher risk of developing dependency on alcohol in comparison to those without that exposure.
Similar was the magnitude shown by people who had experienced sexual abuse in their childhood.
“We found that both direct (physical and sexual abuse) and indirect (witnessing parental domestic violence) forms of childhood victimisation are associated with substance abuse,” said Esme Fuller-Thomson, Professor at the University of Toronto.
Among the study participants one in five adults dependent on drugs and alcohol had been sexually abused in their childhood.
One in seven adults with drug dependence or alcohol dependence had been exposed to chronic parental domestic violence. Parental domestic violence was considered ‘chronic’ if it occurred 11 or more times before the respondent was 16 years of age.
“This compares to one in 25 in the general population,” Fuller-Thomson added.
