LISBON, Portugal - October 2016: The 2015 European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD) constitutes a series of substance use surveys conducted in 35 European countries (24 of them being Member States of the European Union) among 96,043 students aged 15 to 16 years old.* The main purpose of ESPAD is to provide comparable data as a means of monitoring substance use trends within as well as between European countries.

Overall, 4 per cent of students surveyed by ESPAD reported to have had experience with new psychoactive substances (NPS)** in their lifetime. Students surveyed in Estonia and Poland reported the highest rates of lifetime experience with NPS at 10 per cent each. On average, 3 per cent of all students surveyed by ESPAD had used NPS in the last 12 months, with the highest prevalence reported in both Estonia and Poland at 8 per cent, followed by both Croatia and Bulgaria at 6 per cent. Most NPS users have also used at least one other traditional drug.

Figure 1: Prevalence of new psychoactive substance use in the last 12 months (percentage)

Source: European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA); European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD), ESPAD Report 2015, Lisbon, Portugal, 2016.

*Countries surveyed by ESPAD include: Albania, Austria, Belgium (Flanders), Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, the Faroes, Finland, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, France, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden and the Ukraine.

** The definition of NPS used by ESPAD may differ from the one used by UNODC.

For more information, please see:
http://www.espad.org/sites/espad.org/files/ESPAD_report_2015.pdf