The 1999 ESPAD Report. The European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drug Use among Students in 30 European Countries.: By Bjorn Hibell, Barboro Andersson, Salme Ahlstrom, Olga Balakireva, Thoroddur Bjarnason, Anna Kokkevi and Mark Morgan. The Swedish Council for Information on Alcohol and Other Drugs, Stockholm. 2000, 384pp., 30. ISBN: 91-7278-080-0.

Abstract

During the 1980s, a group within the Pompidou Expert Committee on Drug Epidemiology met to develop a standardized survey questionnaire for use in schools around Europe. After a number of pilot studies, the Swedish Council for Information on Alcohol and Other Drugs initiated a collaborative project in 1993, which produced its first European Report in 1995 and this, the second, in 1999. Both were widely reported by the press in the UK and presented an important overview of the state of young people in Europe as far as substance use is concerned. The main aim of this project was to collect comparable data on alcohol, tobacco and drug use amongst 15–16-year-old students in as many European countries as possible. The project team plans to repeat this every fourth year. The data in this report come from 30 participating countries. The target population was to sample all young people born in 1983 and attending school. The authors realized that some drop-outs would be excluded from this, but …