Page 94 - 2017食品藥物管理署年報(英文版)

2017 Taiwan Food and Drug Administration Annual Report

(1) Collecting and compiling national drug abuse information
A. Statistics
To get an insight into status of domestic drug abuse and control the medication
patterns in Taiwan, monitor current status of national drug abuse, and identify
trends of drug abuse behaviors, statistics such as drug abuse urine tests, non-urine
tests of suspected drugs, controlled drugs cases, and discovery of illegal drugs in
the Taiwan region shall be compiled to form the” Drug Abuse Cases and Testing
Statistics”.
B. Report data
TFDA established the “Controlled Drug Abuse Reporting System” that compiles

epidemiological analyses and report data every month:
(A) In 2016, a total of 22,412 drug abuse cases were reported by medical
institutions. The top 3 drug abuse categories were heroin with 14,036
individuals (62.6%), (meth) amphetamine with 6,587 individuals (29.4%),
and ketamine with 2,904 individuals (13.0%).
(B) Demographics of the reported cases were analyzed, the drug abuse cases by
gender consists of male and is mostly distributed in between 40~49 years

of age (32.9%) and between 30~39 years of age (31.6%). Among the drug
categories used by all age groups, ketamine was the most common drug
abused by those below 29 years of age, heroin was the most common drug
abused by those between 30~69 years of age . Individuals aged over 70 years
(inclusive) primarily abused zolpidem.
(C) Analyses for the most common sites of drug abuse were “friend’s residence”,
“on streets”, and “at the dance clubs/pub/hotel”. The leading sources of
illegal substances were “drug dealers/vendors”, followed by “friends”. The
main reasons of drug abuse were “dependence (37.5%)”, followed by “stress

relief (16.3%)”.

(2) Integrating the Cross-departmental narcotics and drug abuse reporting system
database
A. The drug abuse issue is extremely complex. The Ministry of Justice (MOJ),
Ministry of the Interior (MOI), Ministry of Education (MOE), Ministry of Health
and Welfare (MOHW), and Ministry of Labor (MOL) have been authorized to

tackle this issue. To accurately observe the state of drug abuse in Taiwan, the
Executive Yuan has assigned all relevant ministries to contribute their ideas and
build a consensus to integrate various narcotics and drug abuse reporting system

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