We cannot be complacent about abuse

Last week, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime published figures suggesting that Irish people were the biggest abusers of amphetamines in Europe, consuming more than five times as much as most other European countries.

The same survey found that people in this country were second only to Australia in the level of abuse of ecstasy, among the 27 countries surveyed.

The National Advisory Committee on Drugs in Ireland published the results of an in-depth survey yesterday that brought the findings of the UN Survey into question.