The Netherlands Drug Situation 2010 - Trimbos-instituut

Table 6.2.1: Number of non-fatal emergencies due to hard drugs and recreational drugsrecorded by the Amsterdam Municipal Health Service2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009Opiates/cocaine 208 216 257 239 230 238 220 221 197Cannabis 289 285 257 320 242 464 444 381 484Mushrooms 49 50 60 55 70 124 149 125 53Ecstasy 42 39 39 59 63 53 67 43 55Amphetamine 6 5 7 8 3 13 17 14 8LSD 3 1 1 4 1 1 4 4 4GHB 69 67 74 98 76 110 110 128 170Unknown/other 37 38 29 54 89 46 54 115 111Total 703 701 724 837 774 1049 1065 1031 1082Source: Municipal Health Service Amsterdam (GGD Amsterdam).Information requests on acute intoxicationsAnother source of information on trends in emergencies is the number of informationrequests (by telephone) from physicians, health authorities and others on acute intoxicationsrecorded by the National Poisons Information Centre (NVIC) of the RIVM (Van Velzenet al., 2010). Note, however, that these data are just indicative and do not reliablyrepresent the actual number of acute intoxications. Since 2008 the numbers include alsoinformation requests that were sent through the internet. Table 6.2.2 shows that the total number of information requests related to drugssharply increased between 2000 and 2005 but slightly dropped in 2006. A possibleexplanation for the reduction is that physicians have become more familiar with recognisingand treating problems related to (specific) drugs, especially if they havebeen on the market for some time (e.g. ecstasy), which reduces the need to consultthe NVIC for information. In 2009, most information requests were related to cocaine and GHB/GBL, followedby ecstasy and cannabis. The most important changes in 2009 concern an increase in requests for GHB/GBLand reduction in requests related to hallucinogenic mushrooms, which is consistentwith the previously mentioned trends in emergencies in Amsterdam (table 6.2.1). After the ban on hallucinogenic mushrooms, it was questioned whether there wouldbe a shift towards other hallucinogens. This potential 'waterbed effect' was not observedin the data, except for an increase in the number of information requests forintoxications with nutmeg (1 in 2007, 2 in 2008, 10 in 2009), which has hallucinogeniceffects.93