Drug Report 2024: The Alarming Results

They are increasingly consuming it with nicotine pouches and e-cigarettes, which are marketed as lifestyle products, he criticised: "As a result, there could be more people with nicotine addiction again after years of decline". According to the 2024 Drug Report, Austria is also a high-consumption country for alcohol and the number of deaths from illegal substances is rising.

Although teenagers are smoking fewer and fewer cigarettes, this positive trend is partly being undone by increased consumption of the "new nicotine products", said Busch, who heads the "Competence Centre for Addiction" of Gesundheit Österreich GmbH. While in 2002, 22 percent of 15-year-old students smoked daily, in 2022 it was only four percent. However, three percent consumed nicotine pouches every day in 2022 and two percent e-cigarettes. The problem is that nicotine quickly becomes addictive, added flavourings are suspected of being carcinogenic, and the long-term effects of high-dose nicotine consumption are hardly predictable.

Drug Report: 21 Percent in Austria Smoke Daily

In total, 21 percent of people (aged 15 and over) in Austria smoke cigarettes daily, according to the expert. After this rate has been shrinking for men for 30 years and for women for a decade, there have been no significant declines in recent years. However, almost a third of smokers would consider quitting. "This represents a great potential for reducing the number of affected people," he said.

In the long term, per capita consumption of alcohol is also declining in this country. However, because this is happening more quickly elsewhere, Austria is increasingly becoming a high-consumption country for this "psychoactive substance". 15 percent of people here consume alcohol in a health-damaging amount. This is more common among men (19 percent) than women (eleven percent). "After all, men die three to four times more often from alcohol-related causes than women," said Busch.

Nowadays, alcohol plays a much smaller role in traffic accidents than it did a few decades ago, he reported. For instance, in 1971 there were still 420 fatalities due to alcohol influence in road traffic, in 2022 this "only" claimed 26 victims despite the triple number of registered motor vehicles.

Consumption of Illegal Drugs Remains Stable but Increasingly Deadly Overdoses

The consumption situation for illegal drugs from cannabis to heroin is stable. About one fifth of people (between 15 and 64 years) have tried cannabis at least once, 90,000 have at least once "coked" (consumed cocaine, note), said the expert. There would be a significant increase in cocaine use, but "still at a very high level", he said: "The risky drug use is however dominated by the consumption of opioids such as heroin". Estimates suggest that 35,000 to 40,000 people in Austria are affected, predominantly men over 25 years in urban centres like Vienna.

While the number of consumers "is stable", there have recently been increasing fatal overdoses. From 2009 to 2014 the "direct drug-related deaths" in Austria were much fewer, the number dropped from 206 to 122. By 2023 it has more than doubled from that, this year there were 256 drug deaths. "The current data situation does not allow for a clear interpretation of the causes", explained Busch. Part of the increase could be attributed to ageing consumers with a long history of addiction. "They are well integrated into the drug aid system, but become multimorbid with increasing age, which lowers their tolerance threshold and ultimately increases their risk of death", he said: "Another explanation could be the increased purity of the substances, which increases the risk of overdoses". The same amount would then contain more of the dangerous active ingredient.

"What is alarming about the findings of the report is that the consumption of alcohol and nicotine - the two most widespread addictions - remains at a high level internationally", responded Roland Mader, Medical Director of the Anton Proksch Institute. Addiction is a disease that can be treated well, he pointed out in a press release on therapy offers from his addiction clinic and other facilities. Green health spokesman Ralph Schallmeiner also described the new drug report in a press release as "confirmation of the need for a revision of the Tobacco and Non-Smoker Protection Act".

(APA/Red)

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