Vol. 511 No. 3
237 Mr. J. Bruton asked the Minister for Health and Children the rate of progress, and the representation and input of this country, into the work being done by the European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction to estimate, on the basis of common criteria, the cost of drug abuse; if this information will cover the cost of use of legal drugs, for example tobacco, alcohol and illegal drugs; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [24517/99]
Officials from my Department and the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform are members of the management board of the European monitoring centre on drugs and drug addiction. At an operational level the Health Research Board is the focal point for providing Irish information on drug misuse to the centre.
Projects initiated by the centre during 1999 include a network of modelling costs of drug use and cost-effectiveness of interventions. Through this project the EMCDDA has created an expert network for estimating costs of problem drug use and cost-effectiveness of interventions using dynamic models. The network on costs consist of three working groups, one on epidemiological and social aspects, one on dynamic modelling and one on economic aspects. The work initially concentrated on the health costs of hepatitis C, B and HIV, while the work will be extended to cover all social costs of all aspects of drug use. The centre, as well as using EU data will also link with US experts in the field. The timespan for the project is December 1998-December 2000. This specialist project is at the initial stages of developing methodologies to estimate the impact and costs of various aspects of the drug problem.
The management board and member state focal points will be kept appraised of developments in this project and its outcome should assist member states to develop reliable and comprehensive estimates of the cost of drug misuse, using common criteria.
The work of the EMCDDA is confined to illicit drugs and does not include alcohol and tobacco.
