Preliminary results of two nation-wide epidemiological studies of drug use in Greece: a study of known cases and a general population survey.

Multidimensional epidemiological research on drug use in Greece comprising five studies--a study of known cases, a general population survey, a survey of high school students, a study of imprisoned drug addicts and a case identification study--has been undertaken by the Department of Psychiatry, University of Athens. This article summarizes preliminary results obtained in the study of known cases and the general population survey. A study of prevalence of known cases identified 9,689 cases of drug use in Greece (8,821 males and 868 females) who came to the attention of the authorities in 51 counties of the country from 1973 to 1983. Average-age adjusted rates of known drug users per 100,000 were 50 for males and 3 for females. Cannabis resin was the drug most often used by males and heroin and other opiates by females. The average age was 35.7 for male and 31.2 for female drug users. A nation-wide general population survey of drug use, carried out in 1984 on the basis of a probability sample covering the population aged 12 to 64 years, showed that at some time in their lives 5.5 per cent of the respondents (9.1 per cent of the males and 2.5 per cent of the females) used illicit drugs and 11.1 per cent (6.5 per cent of the males and 14.9 per cent of the females) licit drugs. Cannabis resin was the most frequently used illicit drug by both male and female respondents.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)