Cannabis market: user types, availability and consumption estimates

Abstract

In this report we will start with a brief overview of recent developments relating to cannabis markets and policies in the seven countries participating in the project (chapter 1). Most of the information in this chapter is based on the National Reports of the EU Member States to the EMCDDA and can be found on the EMCDDA website (www.emcdda.europa.eu). One document is of special interest in this regard: the recently published Insight of the EMCDDA making a detailed account of the cannabis markets (Carpentier et al. 2012), which is partly based on the Reitox National reports for 2009. For Portugal and The Netherlands specific case studies of drug policy and cannabis policy, respectively, are described in Part III, report 1 and 2. We will then summarize the latest figures on cannabis use and trends in cannabis use (chapter 2). In chapter 3 an introduction is given into ways to classify or typology cannabis users and how we have defined different user groups in the present study. The remainder of this chapter and the next chapter (chapter 4) describe the findings of the web survey conducted in the seven countries with regard to characteristics of cannabis users, especially their consumption patterns, and the availability of cannabis to different user groups. In the last chapter (chapter 5) an integration will be made of existing data on the prevalence of cannabis use and web survey data on consumption patterns in order to estimate per user group the total amount of cannabis consumed annually in each country.