Two thirds of drug-misuse patients in the health service in Northern Ireland last year had taken cannabis, new figures show.<\/p>\n
From a total of a total of 2,229 people presenting to health services here with problem drug misuse, almost 66% were cannabis users.<\/p>\n
The figures are contained in the Department of Health\u2019s Northern Ireland drug misuse database.\u00a0\u00a0 Cannabis was by far the most commonly-used substance amongst problem drug-misuse patients here, according to the database.<\/p>\n
Benzodiazepines, a class of drug with a host of medical uses that is commonly prescribed to patients suffering from anxiety, was the next most commonly used drug with just over 37% reporting having taken benzodiazepines.<\/p>\n
The next on the list is cocaine with more than a third of those in the database (almost 35%) having taken it.\u00a0 That represents a significant increase in the number of people who said they took cocaine. Last year it was 25%.<\/p>\n
The use of ecstasy dropped substantially, from 26% last year to 10% this year, while heroin use has also fallen, from 13% to 10%.<\/p>\n
One-in-20 said they had injected themselves with drugs.<\/p>\n
The database also shows that most (60%) of those presenting for treatment took more than one drug. A fifth (23%) took two drugs, while another fifth (19%) said they took at least four different drugs.<\/p>\n
Almost half (46%) said they took stimulants; this type of drug includes cocaine and amphetamines.\u00a0 Just over a quarter (26%) said they used at least one opioid analgesic drug \u2013 a class of drugs used in medicine to relieve pain, that also includes the illegal drug heroin.\u00a0 A fifth (20%) of all those who said they used these type of drugs also said it was their \u201cmain drug\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 The figures also showed a clear gender divide with males making up 79% of patients.<\/p>\n
The Department of Health say they hold \u201cinformation relating to 2,340 individuals that presented to drug misuse treatment services in 2015\/16\u201d.\u00a0 The figures quoted in this article are based on 2,229 of those individuals who agreed to be included in the database.<\/p>\n
Tobacco and alcohol misuse is excluded.<\/p>\n
Source:\u00a0 http:\/\/www.newsletter.co.uk\/news\/crime\/two-thirds-of-mental-health-drug-patients-used-cannabis-\u00a0\u00a0 23rd December 2016<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two thirds of drug-misuse patients in the health service in Northern Ireland last year had taken cannabis, new figures show. From a total of a total of 2,229 people presenting to health services here with problem drug misuse, almost 66% were cannabis users. The figures are contained in the Department of Health\u2019s Northern Ireland drug […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,17,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drug-specifics","category-europe-uk","category-social-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13030\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}