What are hypnosedatives, the third most consumed drug in Spain after alcohol and tobacco?

Thus, the drugs with the highest prevalence of use among Spaniards in the last 12 months are:

• Alcohol (76.4%).

• Tobacco (39.0%).

• Hypnosedatives with or without a prescription (13.1%).

• Cannabis (10.6%).

• Cocaine (2.4%).

Less bottle

Alcoholic beverages continue to be the most consumed psychoactive substances in our country, specifically, more than 76% of the 26,344 people between the ages of 15 and 64 surveyed have consumed alcohol in the last year.

The data, despite being high, shows a slight decrease, since in the previous 2020 survey, the percentage of people who claimed to have drunk alcohol during the previous year was 77.2%.

Within alcohol, if we focus on what is called ‘intensive consumption’, 16.7% of Spaniards claim to have gotten drunk in the last 12 months, which represents a decrease of 2.7 percentage points compared to the previous survey. .

The problem, despite this decrease, is that this type of drunkenness occurs, above all, among young people, between 15 and 34 years of age. In this age group, 35.4% of men and 24.1% of women say they have gotten drunk at some time in the last 12 months, and 6.4% in the last month.

Lastly, another positive piece of information emerges from the survey and it is a reduction of 2.5 points in the number of people who claim to consume alcohol in the so-called bottles. Thus, the percentage goes from 9.9% in 2020 to 7.4% in 2022.

The percentage of people who consume alcohol in the bottles is reduced.

Tobacco and electronic cigarettes

Behind alcohol, tobacco is situated as another of the most consumed substances in Spain and its consumption presents practically no changes.

In 2022, 69.6% of the population aged 15 to 64 claimed to have smoked at some time in their lives, 39.0% said they had done so in the last year, 37.2% in the last month and 33. 1% daily in the last month.

These data are very similar to those obtained in the 2020 survey. There are also no changes in the age of initiation of smoking, which is around 16 years.

At the opposite extreme is the consumption of , whose percentage continues, unfortunately, to increase. Thus, 12.1% of Spaniards have used these devices at some point in their lives, almost two points more than in 2020, when the percentage was 10.5%, and almost double the 6.8% in 2015.

And, as in the case of alcohol, it is the youngest (15 to 24 years old) who most opt ​​for electronic cigarettes. 18.8% have used it at some time in their lives and 9.1% in the last year.

Increased use of hypnosedatives

What continues to increase steadily since 2018 is the consumption of hypnosedatives (Central Nervous System depressant drugs, with sedative, relaxing or anticonvulsant effects), obtained both with and without a prescription. In fact, those responsible for the study indicate that the maximum consumption recorded so far has been reached, 23.5%.

In 2022, 13.1% of people aged 15 to 64 have used them in the last 12 months, and the proportion is higher among women (16.0%) than among men (10.3%).

In addition, the EDADES survey makes it possible to extract significant data on this type of substance, which is that during the last year some 713,000 people have started taking hypnosedatives, people who had never used them before.

And who are the ones who consume these substances the most? Well, people over 35 years of both sexes.

Some 713,000 people started taking hypnosedatives in 2022.

The number of people who consume cannabis daily rises

Until now we had talked about legal substances, but in the section on illegal ones, cannabis continues to be the most widely used. In 2022, 40.9% of the population acknowledged having used this substance at some time in their lives, 10.6% in the last 12 months, 8.6% in the last 30 days and 2.8% daily in the last month.

These data show that in recent years the occasional consumption of cannabis has practically not changed, but that of those who take it on a daily basis. This percentage has increased to 2.8% in 2022 from 1.7% in 2007.

Once again, it is young people who consume cannabis the most, specifically the age group between 15 and 24 years.

Cocaine

Another of the most widely consumed illegal psychoactive substances is cocaine and its use, like that of cannabis, remains stable. In 2022, 12% of those surveyed had used cocaine at some time in their lives, 2.4% had done so in the last 12 months and 1.4% in the last month.

Depending on gender, it is men who consume the most cocaine, and the age group that consumes the most is between 25 and 34 years. The average age of starting powder cocaine use is 21.1 years.