BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom

Forty to fifty thousand 000 Bulgarians, most of them young people, are regular heroin abusers; 50 per cent of them take the narcotic every day.
The spread of heroin is acquiring epidemic proportions, though the pace of its increasing abuse is slower compared to two or three years ago. Heroin users have also become younger, they are in the 18-20 age group, while some years ago they were mainly of the 22-24 age group.
The above data were cited by Dr Georgi Vasilev, director of the National Drug Addiction Centre.

Dr Vasilev took part in the constitution of a Municipal Council on Narcotic Substances Similar councils will be set up in all bigger cities to make the combat against drugs more efficient.
There is a boom in the spread of cannabis in Bulgaria, too, Dr Vasilev said. A youth culture is being created that popularizes the abuse of cannabis even with songs, he said. A representative survey conducted in Sofia shows that one-third of secondary school students have tried cannabis at least once at the age of 10-12.
Cocaine users are recruited in the big cities, Dr Vasilev said. Between 4 and 6 per cent of secondary school students in Sofia have tried the drug, which is two times more compared to the period of some years ago.

The municipal councils on narcotic drugs will combine the efforts of the authorities and of non-governmental organizations to prevent the expansion of the drug market in Bulgaria, Dr Vasilev said.

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