Four new synthetic drugs under EU control
Cited from Alain Wallon and Roumen Sedefov, Drugnet Europe No. 45, January–March, 2004 

The Council of the European Union has adopted a Decision defining four new synthetic drugs as substances to be placed under control measures and criminal penalties in the EU Member States. … All four drugs, 2C-1, 2C-T-2, 2C-T-7 and TMA-2, are amphetamine derivatives and have hallucinogenic and stimulant properties. Although there have been no reported cases within the EU of death or poisoning due to these drugs, they are believed to carry similar risks to other hallucinogenic drugs that are already listed under Schedules I or II of the 1971 UN Convention on psychotropic substances.

Following the publication of the decision in the Official Journal of the European Union, and in line with their national laws, EU Member States have up to three months to introduce measures to control the four drugs, in compliance with their obligations under the 1971 UN Convention on psychotropic substances.

Progress in the key indicator ‘drug-related deaths’
Cited from Julián Vicente, Drugnet Europe No. 45, January–March 2004

The EMCDDA expert group on population statistics on drug-related deaths held its most recent annual meeting on 11 and 12 December last year. The aim of the meeting was to consolidate the implementation of this key indicator by reviewing progress in each country, assessing the quality of the annual summary data (Reitox tables) and developing technical training for full application of the drug-related death protocol for a forthcoming detailed data collection. …

The forthcoming data collection (detailed aggregated data) builds on previous projects and aims to validate the key figures reported annually by countries, to analyse national application of ICD classifications and to allow further analysis at national and EU level.

Prevalence estimation: cutting-edge work needs further investment
Cited from Luke Wiessing, Ludwig Kraus and Carla Rossi, Drugnet Europe No. 45, January–March 2004

The latest EU-wide expert meeting on estimation of the prevalence and incidence of problem drug use … concentrated on (1) how to further refine the current EMCDDA definition of problem drug use, which is a relatively wide ‘umbrella definition’ that includes several subgroups of problem users; (2) how to obtain more and better estimates of the prevalence and incidence of problematic stimulant use; and (3) the urgent need for more and repeated local estimates as a necessary ingredient of improved national estimates. It was acknowledged that the multivariate indicator method (MIM) can provide powerful syntheses at national level but cannot be used in the absence of multiple high-quality local estimates (preferably obtained by capture–recapture based on three or more data sets). New incidence estimates from Austria, Italy and Spain presented at the meeting suggest that there is important variation over time in the initiation rates of new opiate users, providing further evidence for the epidemic nature of problem drug use.