Health issues and consequences of drug misuse.

This chapter describes the results of studies, which have researched the use of drugs by different groups in Ireland, e.g. general population surveys, and school and youth surveys. The author cautions against extracting general trends, given the different objectives and methodologies used by different studies, and stresses the need for regular surveys using comparable methodologies, which would allow trends over time to be monitored. Such surveys should be comparable nationally and internationally if meaningful interpretation to be achieved