Characteristics and social representation of ecstasy in Europe - Irefrea

alcohol, only a third drunk alcohol on the particular night. Ten percent of therespondents didn’t take any drug at the party and another ten percent only smokedtobacco. The incidence prevalence in this study -which are quite high- should be judgedin the nature of the use. Therefore a great part of the report contains qualitative dataabout the nature of the use of amphetamines and ecstasy.Both ecstasy and amphetamines are used with intervals. Also the dynamics resemblefor both drugs: in the first year(s) the use increases until a turn is reached and thefrequency of the use decreases again. In time the use of amphetamines often comes toa stand still and the use of ecstasy is stabilised to a recreational level. Furthermore it isapparent that the majority of the respondents don’t have any problems or symptoms atthe end of the night. Few people bring a visit to the First Aid post. The circumstancesat raves hardly lead to physical or other symptoms. Relative few partygoers run risksand report symptoms in the short term from ecstasy use at raves.Another study is done in the Southern Netherlands (Hoebe & Jansen, 1997). Theyinterviewed 4000 disco-visitors on ecstasy use when they left the disco in Novemberand December 1996. The interviews lasted about five minutes. They had a responserateof 94% (which is very high). From this study we learn that an amount of the‘outgoing public’ uses ecstasy: 23% ever used ecstasy; 20% used it last year and 14%used it last month. Ecstasy use increases after the sixteenth birthday. According to theresearchers the combination of ecstasy and other drugs leads to health risks. They foundthat 65% of the frequent ecstasy users consumes ecstasy and alcohol at the same time.But the use of alcohol is almost equal for ‘ecstasy-users’ and ‘ecstasy-tryers’. Alcoholstill is the mostly used substance among disco-visitors (>60% of the population).Since 1993 a monitoring study in Amsterdam is being conducted in which newtrends and developments in consumer patterns of illicit drugs by Amsterdam youngstersare signalised and interpret. Antenne Amsterdam 1995 consists of a combination offour kinds of data on drug use and gambling. Besides a set group of youngsters andschoolkids, they chose visitors of discotheques and raves in Amsterdam as a ‘group-atrisk’(this target group changes every year). They found in 1995 that 52% of the discogoersever used ecstasy and 34% of the disco-goers ever used amphetamines.life time last year last monthCocaine 39 25 15Ecstasy 52 41 33Amphetamines 34 20 12LSD 23 9 3Heroin 6 1 1Mushrooms 29 19 6Crack 2 0 0base cocaine 10 3 1Prevalence of disco-goers in 1995 (Korf & Nabben, 1995)159