Young Slovaks find marijuana appealing, with approximately 40 percent of respondents aged 15-24 experimenting with the drug last year, according to a European school survey on alcohol and drugs. The survey was conducted on a sample of 10,000 students. Some young people don't use marijuana just occasionally, but smoke it on a daily basis, Imrich Šteliar of the National Monitoring Centre for Drugs (NMCD) said at a press conference in Bratislava on Tuesday. Šteliar added that cannabis is the only illegal drug that is seeing long-term growth in popularity, mostly on the account of being cheap, easily accessible and the fact that people are eager to experience unusual experiences. Marijuana represents the most popular illegal drug in Slovakia, accessible to users in both rural settings, towns and cities and festivals. However, also growing is the number of people seeking treatment due to cannabis-related problems: there were 500 patients treated in 2015 with an average age of 25. The figure is almost equal to the number of people treated for heroin addiction.
"The demand for cannabis is also high throughout Europe", said Claudia Costa Storti of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, who came to present the survey results to Slovakia. Approximately 16.6 million Europeans aged 15-24 used marijuana in 2015, with some 1 percent of adult Europeans smoking cannabis daily. Another drug growing in popularity in the 15-34 age category in Europe is ecstasy. "It's no longer the exclusive domain of dance clubs and parties", warned Storti, adding that some European cities have seen a rapid rise in the number of ecstasy users.
However, Šteliar believes that is not the trend in Slovakia, citing samples collected from communal waste waters. Although the consumption of ecstasy has grown slightly in Slovakia, its concentration in comparison to other European cities stays rather low, with the drug used usually at dance clubs and festivals. Out of 8,000 respondents, some 3.5 percent admitted to using the drug, growing from the approximately 1 percent recorded by previous statistics.
