This report is part of an integrated European Union (EU) project called Driving Under the Influence of Drugs, Alcohol and Medicines (DRUID). The aim of DRUID is to gain new insights to the impairment caused by psychoactive drugs and their actual impact on road safety, to fill the gaps of knowledge and to provide a solid base to generate harmonized, EU-wide regulations for driving under the influence of alcohol, drugs and medicine. The consumption of psychoactive substances such as alcohol, drugs and certain medicines are likely to endanger the drivers attitude and impaired driving is still one of the major causes for road accidents. Data about the consumption of medicinal and illicit drugs in the general population give information about the dimension of the problem and about the distribution of specific psychoactive substances consumed in the various EU member states. Data about drug consumption in general are also important to decide which substances should be taken in the focus for further research within the DRUID project. This report focuses on the consumption of both medicinal and illicit drugs in Europe. The first part of the report illustrates the consumption patterns of some medicinal drug classes that have central nervous system (CNS) effects or side effects. The medicinal drug classes have been chosen in order to cover the most frequently used psychotropic medicines and medicines with CNS side effects that are known to affect driving performance and potentially increase crash risk. Retrospective medicinal drug utilization data was collected through scientific networks, and publicly available websites. In order to enable comparison of drug utilization between countries, and to detect trends over time, the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (ATC)/defined daily dose (DDD) methodology was chosen. The second part of the report illustrates the illicit drug use. The illicit drug groups include cannabis, some synthetic drugs, cocaine and opioids. This latter part of the report is based on the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) annual report on the state of the drug problem in Europe. The data are based on information that is provided to the EMCDDA by European countries in the form of a national report which refers to national surveys among target groups. (Author/publisher) This document is available at https://www.bast.de/Druid/EN/Home/home_node.html
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