Hot Press is delighted to be able to exclusively bring you the first Irish findings from the Global Drug Survey, the biggest report of its kind based on data confidentially supplied by 130,000 people from over 40 countries.
Cannabis remains Ireland’s illicit drug of choice with 61.8% of respondents saying they used it over the past 12 months, which is down from 2017’s high – if you pardon the pun – of 73.5%
Cocaine use remains steady at 35.2%, which suggests that anecdotal reports of a coke epidemic have been exaggerated.
The other good news is that Ireland doesn’t appear to have developed a taste for synthetic cannabis, which has been linked to numerous prison suicides in the UK and is considered far more dangerous than the herbal variety. Its lifetime drug use figure – 10.2% - is quite high, but people appear to soon tire of it with just 1.5% of respondents smoking it over the past 12 months.
And while chemsex remains a serious health issue for a small percentage of the LGBTQ community, the substance most closely associated with it, GHB, doesn’t appear to have spread to the wider drug food chain.
Of the much-vaunted new psychoactive substances, only 2 cb appears to have developed a significant toehold here.

The league table in full is:

Cannabis – 61.8%
MDMA – 42.7%
Cocaine – 35.2%
Ketamine – 21%
LSD – 17%
Magic mushrooms – 16.8%
Opioid – 14%
Amphetamine – 13%
Benzos – 10%
2 cb – 8.1%
Nitrous – 6.4%
Tramadol – 5.9%
Truffles – 5.5%
Zdrug – 4%
Methylphenidate – 3.6%
Methamphetamine – 3%
Salvia – 2.1%
Modafinil – 1.9%
Kava – 1.7%
Synthetic cannabis – 1.5%
Opium – 1.3%
Ayahuasca – 1.3%
Nps61plsd – 1.1%