Cannabis use among teenagers in the UK has begun to stabilize, but only because it is so widespread that the market has become saturated, the EU's drug agency warned on Wednesday.
The EU monitoring centre on drugs and drug abuse also warned of new public health dangers from the increasing potency of cannabis available in Britain. It raised concerns about the long-term health implications of the emergence of a significant new group of teenage boys who are using cannabis intensively -- more than 20 times a month.
Its annual report, published yesterday, says the official goal of reducing drug consumption by 2006 across Europe remains a long way off, with at least one in five adults in the EU having tried cannabis and an emerging problem of growing cocaine use in some cities, particularly in Britain.
Georges Estievenart, director of the agency, said there were some grounds for cautious optimism about the drug situation in Europe, such as the adoption of a drug strategy by most national governments.
The report says that cannabis remains the illicit drug most frequently used by young people across Europe. The UK has one of the highest usage levels in Europe, with 42 percent of all 15 to 34-year-olds saying they had tried it at least once -- second only to Denmark.
The price of cannabis resin has been stable across the rest of Europe but has fallen sharply in the past four years in Britain, possibly as a result of the rapid rise in homegrown marijuana production, which has been estimated at 50 percent of the market. Hashish, mostly imported from Morocco, is cheapest in Britain at 2.30 euros (US$2.72) a gram, and most expensive in Norway at 26.60 euros.
"Evidence indicates that the average potency of cannabis in the EU has risen and now ranges from around 5-10 percent for both resin and herbal varieties, but some samples are considerably stronger with a THC [the active ingredient] content of up to 30 percent. This raises public health concerns," the report says.
A decade ago the THC content of most cannabis was about 1 percent to 2 percent.
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