A Europe-wide study found that Ireland, relative to other countries, has a small number of drug seizures each year – between one and ten thousand a year.

More than 80 per cent of drug seizures in Europe are for cannabis, a massive study on drug use in Europe has found.

The study published yesterday said around one million seizures of illicit drugs are reported annual in Europe. Most of these are small quantities of drugs confiscated from users, although this total also includes multi-kilogram consignments seized from traffickers and producers.

In 2012, two-thirds of all seizures in the European Union were reported by just two countries, Spain and the United Kingdom. Smaller, but non-trivial numbers of seizures were reported by Germany, Belgium, Italy and four Nordic countries.