Cyprus
Country profile
Cyprus
Population | 705,500 (2001) |
|---|---|
Capital city | Nicosia |
GDP per capita |
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Drug strategy
Cyprus has presently no National Drug Strategy on Drugs. However, the first draft of the Strategy and Action Plan for 2003-2007, have been prepared and will be elaborated and finalized within the framework of a twinning project which starts in October 2003. The Strategy is expected to be endorsed by the House of Representatives beginning of 2004.
Drug use among young people
Experience with illicit drugs seems very uncommon among young people in Cyprus. Only 2% of students ages 14 to 18 years old reported use of cannabis or any other illicit drug in 1999 (ESPAD).
Prevention
Prevention programmes are offered through the Drug Prevention Center under the auspice of the Ministry of Health. It offers prevention programs at the secondary level, campaigns, seminars and lecturers for parents, teachers and professionals. In addition, the Ministry of Education and Culture and various non-governmental institutions also initiate drug prevention seminars and training for teachers.
Treatment demand and problem drug use
Since 1995, the Ministry of Health Mental Services collects data from five therapeutic centres. The number of persons requesting help for the first time has increased constantly between 1995 and 2000 and decreased slightly in 2001. The most popular primary drugs of choice among patients have been heroin (52.3%), cannabis (27.5%) and ecstasy (10.7%) for the latest reporting year (2001). Especially the number of patients with dependency on ecstasy increased substantially since 1998. Thirty-four percent reported injecting drug use as their most common route of administration.
Treatment responses
Three inpatient centres, one of them offering the only inpatient detoxification unit, and two outpatient centres, provide treatment for drug users in Cyprus. Substitution treatment does not exist.
Health consequences
According to the drug treatment data, 2.7% of patients were infected with HIV in 2001. No case of HBV or HCV was identified.
Harm reduction responses
The development of strategies to reduce drug related harm has been under the responsibility of the National AIDS programme, Ministry of Health. This domain, as well, will form part of the National Drugs Strategy.
Reports on the drugs situation
No documents were available at the time of report’s publication.
documents in English | 
documents in national language
Disclaimer © European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, 2002
The texts, reports and publications in this section have been provided by the candidate countries’ national focal points. The findings, conclusions and interpretations in these documents are those of the authors alone and do not represent the policy of the EMCDDA, its partners, any EU Member State or any agency or institution of the European Union or European Communities.
Related websites
- European Commission: Enlargement: Cyprus – This page provides an introduction to Cyprus’ country profile, an overview of of key documents related to enlargement, press releases and interesting links.
http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/cyprus/index.htm
documents in English | documents in national language | bilingual websites
The country profiles were produced by the EMCDDA in collaboration with National Focal Points in the acceding and candidate countries and were primarily based on their 2002 National Reports on the drugs situation. Due to the existing incompleteness of the epidemiological data provided, the information given should not be used for comparison of the drug situation between countries. They constitute separate sources of basic information on the drug situation in each country. In addition, estimates for individual indicators (i.e. treatment demand indicator) presented in the profiles may not be representative of the population they refer to and should be interpreted with caution. Efforts will be undertaken to improve comparability, compatibility with EMCDDA standards and to update the profiles on a regular basis.