CYPRUS can boast lower levels of teenage drug abuse than any other European country, but there are indications that heroin use is growing on the island.
Education Minister Ourannios Ioannides yesterday presented the Cyprus findings of the 30-country ESPAD probe into the drinking, smoking and drug use habits of 16-year-old students.
The ESPAD study puts Cyprus at the bottom of the European league for use of illicit drugs, making a mockery of widespread recent press speculation about spiralling abuse of dangerous narcotics on the island.
The near-hysterical reports have been sparked by televised interviews with heroin addicts and disputed reports that one-in-four Cypriots had dabbled with illegal drugs.
Ioannides said the ESPAD study results were “very good” for Cyprus, but also promised there would be no let-up in government anti-drugs campaigns.
The study showed that a mere 3.5 per cent of Cypriot 16-year-olds had tried drugs, compared to the European average of 18 per cent. Britain tops the ‘league of shame’, with more than a third, 36 per cent, of all British 16-year-olds having tried illegal drugs.
The study — for which a quarter, or 2,095, of all Cypriot first year Lyceum students were polled — also showed that use of illegal narcotics had dropped by about 37 per cent since the last ESPAD study, in 1995.
It also showed very low levels of use of legal drugs – cigarettes and alcohol – in Cyprus compared to the rest of Europe.
The down side of the 1999 study’s results are suggestions that heroin is making more of an impact locally.
The number of teenagers using harder drugs like heroin, amphetamines, LSD, crack, cocaine and ecstasy dropped to 1.4 per in 1999, compared to 2 per cent in 1995, the study showed. These figures put Cyprus joint-bottom of the European hard drugs use league.
However, heroin proved the exception to this encouraging pattern.
The number of those trying heroin remained roughly the same, at 1.8 per cent in 1999 compared to 1.9 per cent in 1995. But the ESPAD study also showed that the number of teenage boys who had tried heroin up to nine times had risen by 50 per cent since 1995, from 2.2 per cent to 3.4 per cent.
“Heroin is the only drug showing an increase in the number of boys using it regularly,” government drugs expert Dr Damianos Pityris said in presenting the ESPAD study yesterday.
Overall, the number of teenage boys and girls who had used heroin up to nine times was up to 1.2 per cent in 1999 compared to 0.9 per cent in 1995. Even though the number of those who had used heroin more regularly (over 40 times) was down to 0.3 per cent in 1999 compared to 0.8 per cent in 1995, Pityris picked out a worrying heroin-use pattern amongst local teenage girls too.
“Despite the downward trend in overall drug use by girls, heroin is now their favourite except for marijuana. This is in complete contrast to 1995, when heroin was bottom of their preferences,” Dr Pityris said.
“This, in conjunction with the increase in heroin use by boys, confirms the need for further study of the phenomenon and for measures to be taken,” the government doctor said.
Dr Kyriacos Veresies, who oversaw the Cyprus leg of the ESPAD study, admitted that heroin use was “slightly up”, but also said the overall drug-use pattern was far from clear-cut. “It is difficult to see if those going into heroin are those who did hash in past,” he said.
But Veresies warned that heroin was becoming more easily available: “The fact that more of the substance is on the market at moment means more people will use it,” he said.
Minister Ioannides said he was “terribly worried” by the statistics relating to heroin but also stressed that the number of secondary school students trying heroin had not changed.
Ioannides homed in on the fact that the overall results of the ESPAD study made very encouraging reading for Cyprus.
“These results are very good for Cyprus. But they do not satisfy us, they rather give us reason to be certain our efforts and programmes are bringing results, something which makes us intensify our efforts,” the Minister said.
He reeled off a whole list of fresh anti-drug education initiatives the state is undertaking in co-operation with the Church-backed drug battling foundation, KENTHEA.
Bishop Chrysostomos of Kitium said KENTHEA would be turning the buildings of the old leper colony by the Larnaca salt lake into a live-in centre for rehabilitated drug addicts within a matter of weeks.
Donating the leper colony buildings to KENTHEA has been one of a number of recent high-profile government efforts fight drug abuse and placate public concern over the issue. President Clerides has also set up a ministerial drugs council and announced funding for further research into narcotics abuse.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
