Levels of drug use in France in 2010

For the past ten years, the INPES (French National Institute for Prevention and Health Education) and the OFDT (French Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction) have been measuring the spread and use of psychoactive substances in France through general population surveys.

Whether conducted in the population as a whole or among younger age groups, the information from these surveys describes the diversity of substance use (e.g., experimentation, current use, regular use), and makes it possible to assess the relationships between use and other factors and to conduct analyses of the types of use at regional or county level.

Since these surveys are conducted regularly over time, they are especially useful as tools for following trends in use for psychoactive substances.

It is the simple use of the most commonly found substances that is mainly assessed in these general population surveys. The observation of harmful drug use and drug addiction to illegal drugs, as well as the emergence of new drugs, calls for the use of additional monitoring tools, such as statistics from institutions (law enforcement and health-related) and/or ethnographic studies and observations.

The results of the Baromètre santé 2010 health survey, presented in this issue of Tendances, provide updated information on the level of use in the adult population of the various legal and illegal substances as well as changes in use since the results of the Baromètre santé 2005 survey.

Reference data give some framework on the 11- to 75-year-olds. Otherwise, these initial results concern only the population aged 18-75 for alcohol and tobacco use and the population aged 18-64 for illegal drug use; other specific surveys were used for adolescents (ESCAPAD and ESPAD).