This letter refers to a paper describing a screening study for drug use in an Irish obstetric population. A recent screening of 131 women, carried out by the authors, of of 131 women who booked consecutively for antenatal care at the Coombe Women's Hospital, using a one-step immunoassay technique (Accusign; PBM, Princeton, New Jersey, USA) is described. This screening provided the following results: 5 samples tested positive for amphetamines; 2 for opiates and none for cocaine, yielding an overall detection rate of approximately 5%. Urine was not tested for other substances, e.g. methadone, cannabis, benzodiazepines or alcohol and therefore, our prevalence of "hard drugs" was approximately 3.8%. The authors argue that this strongly supports the case for antenatal screening for drugs of abuse.