The results of a national survey, released this Wednesday, reveal that people are smoking more and gambling more for money. But alcohol is still the most consumed psychoactive substance in Portugal.
The V National Survey on the Consumption of Psychoactive Substances in the General Population, Portugal 2022, released this Wednesday, once again presents alcohol as the most consumed psychoactive substance in Portugal. Three out of every four people (75.8%) between the ages of 15 and 74 have had at least one experience of drinking alcohol in their lifetime.
The study by the Institute for Addictive Behaviors and Dependencies (ICAD) indicates that the value is close to those recorded over the last 20 years. The series was only broken in 2017, when the rate reached 86.4%, a value that researchers attribute to the consumption declarations made by women, which soared that year.
The survey for 2022 reveals that alcohol consumption in the last year has increased, since 2017, from 59.4% to 63.5% and that more people are smoking tobacco. “The prevalence of tobacco consumption increased, between 2017 and 2022, from 48.8% to 51%”, it reads.
If in the 2001 report the prevalence was 40%, the number of people who admitted having smoked at some point in their lives has increased, approaching 50% in recent years, and now reaching 51%.
Among illicit psychoactive substances, the percentage of people who say they have tried them is 11.2%. Cannabis is the most consumed, with 10.5% of respondents admitting that they had already tried it. The remaining substances have lifetime prevalences of between 0.9% (cocaine) and 0.2% (new psychoactive substances).
“The prevalence of consumption among the general population is higher among male respondents regardless of the psychoactive substance considered, with the exception of medicines”, states the study. With regard to medications, sedatives, tranquilizers or hypnotics have a prevalence of 14.2%, while stimulants were consumed by 1.1% of the population and opioid analgesics by 7.5%.
In addition to the consumption of psychoactive substances, researchers analyzed other risk behaviors, such as gambling.
The prevalence of gambling (cash games), which had decreased by almost twenty percentage points between 2012 and 2017, rose again, from 48.1% in 2017 to 55.6% in 2022 , with Euromillions being the one with the highest prevalence.
The survey was carried out by CICS.NOVA — Interdisciplinary Center for Social Sciences at Universidade Nova de Lisboa (NOVA FCSH) for SICAD — Intervention Service for Addictive Behaviors and Addictions, following studies carried out in 2001, 2007, 2012 and 2017 .
