EU Watchdog Slams Bulgaria over Drug Addict Treatment

The EU's main drugs watchdog has criticized Bulgaria for not providing outpatient treatment for drug addicts in its annual report released Thursday.

The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) stated; “In four countries (Bulgaria, Estonia, Romania, Turkey)...outpatient psychosocial treatment is estimated to be available to less than half of those who actively seek it.”

The report also suggested that inpatient psychosocial treatment is also only available to less than half of those who actively seek it in Bulgaria.

It went on to say that detoxification programs are mainly provided by the private sector in Bulgaria and Luxembourg unlike in the other EU countries where they are funded by public funds.

The EMCDDA reported that cannabis users made up less than 5% of those seeking help in Bulgaria and that a specific program for cannabis users does not exist - Opioid clients account for more than 90 % of those entering treatment in the country. Bulgaria also saw an increase in heroin users enetering treatment from 2005-2007.

Among 15- to 16-year-old Bulgarian school students, EMCDDA said that the prevalence of amphetamines and ecstasy use is over 5% - one of the highest in the EU.

Regarding clients receiving substitution treatment in the EU, the highest rates of increase have been seen in Estonia, where the number of clients increased within 5 years from 60 to more than 1 000, and Bulgaria, where the number of treatment places increased from 380 to nearly 3 000 between 2003 and 2007.

Bulgaria was one of only two countries in the EU to see an increase of HIV infection amongst drug users, especially noted in Sofia : from 0.3 new cases per million population in 2002 to 5.6 cases in 2007.

The EMCDDA concluded however that Bulgaria saw one of the lowest death rates amongst drug users in the EU.

Generally the report showed that European efforts to curb cocaine and heroin use made little impact in the past year.

But cannabis use, particularly among young people, is declining, according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA).

They noted that combinations of drugs pose increasing problems, as do new synthetic drugs, many of them marketed on the internet.