New study needed for ‘reliable’ drug use data

The National Advisory Committee on Drugs (NACD) is commissioning research on the methods and data sources used to estimate drug use, Irish Medical Times has learned.

The two-month project will determine the number of problem opiate and cocaine users and the prevalence of opiate and cocaine use in the country — one of five key indicators identified by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA).

The NACD undertook a national study on the prevalence of opiate use in 2006. Yet due to a number of technical factors relating to the survey population, it was not possible to obtain a ‘reliable’ estimate. The NACD is now undertaking research with improved capture-recapture methods — a methodology favoured by the EMCDDA for estimating the number of opiate users.

The project is expected to commence before September 13, once the NACD has agreed a contractor. The final report will be due eight weeks from the award of the contract.

The research will involve a review of the international methods used to estimate the number of problem opiate and cocaine users.

Source: Aoife Connors, Irish Medical Times, 27/07/2010

Posted by Andy on 07/27 at 07:26 AM in

(1) Comments

Comments

#1. Posted by Tim Bingham on July 27, 2010

I welcome such a project, however its a shame that its only a 2 month project. I do believe that the statistics that we have are skewed and believe ‘we’ missed the opportunity to collate adequate statistics especially when funding was available, one of the problems is that there are regional and project variations on how statistics are collected and collated, another issue is that statistics are collected when a person presents to a service, there are many people who don’t present to services for one reason or another. Its vital to have comprehensive statistics this way services can be targeted at those areas in need, otherwise we are assuming there is a problem and relying on anecdotal evidence.