The Department of Health has published the 12th edition of Health in Ireland: Key trends 2019.¹ Using data from newly available sources, the report highlights selected trends in drug, alcohol, and tobacco consumption as well as the number of individuals entering treatment in Ireland for problem drug and alcohol use between 2009 and 2018.

Smoking, alcohol, and cannabis use

Figure 1 shows the percentage of Irish children, aged 11–17 years, who engaged in risky health behaviours for the years 2010, 2014 and 2018. Findings demonstrate that there has been a constant downward trend in the percentage of children who smoked cigarettes monthly or frequently, who had ever used alcohol, and who had used cannabis in the last year. Similarly, there has been a downward trend in alcohol and cigarette consumption among adults aged 15 years and over between 1998 and 2018 (see Figure 2).

Treatment for problem drug and alcohol use

Table 1 shows the number of individuals entering treatment for problem alcohol or drug use between 2009 and 2018. There were 17,093 cases treated in 2018, representing a rate of 217 people per 100,000 aged 15–64 years. This is an increase of 8.6% compared with 2017, when there were 15,742 individuals in treatment. However, figures show that this rate peaked in 2011 at 251.7 per 100,000 aged 15–64 years and has been slowly decreasing ever since.

1 Department of Health (2019) Health in Ireland: Key trends 2019. Dublin: Government of Ireland.
https://www.drugsandalcohol.ie/31508/