LA VALLETTA (MALTA) (ITALPRESS/MNA) – Cannabis use among 15- and 16-year-olds in Malta has remained stable since the country legalized the recreational drug in 2021, according to new data from the European Union Agency for Drugs.
The European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (Espad) 2024 reports that 11% of Maltese teenagers said they had tried cannabis at least once in their lives – a percentage unchanged from 2019, two years before the landmark law. Cannabis use, defined as use in the last 30 days, has also remained stable at just above 4%, while early use (before the age of 13) has remained at just above 2%. However, accessibility remains high.
Around 30% of students said cannabis was “fairly or very easy” to obtain – slightly below the 2019 peak of 33%, but above the European average of 27%. Cannabis continues to be the most commonly used illicit drug in Malta, in line with broader European trends. Strikingly, Malta is one of the few countries where girls report higher cannabis use than boys – 14% versus 8.6%.
This is the first time since Espad surveys began in 1999 that Maltese girls have outperformed their male peers in cannabis use. High-risk use, as measured by the Cannabis Abuse Screening Test (Cast), is also more common among girls (4.4%) than boys (2.6%) – a unique reversal among the 37 countries surveyed.
– Photo IPA Agency –
(ITALPRESS)
