Tramadol non-medical use in Four European countries: A comparative analysis.

Background: Understanding prescription medication misuse is challenging due to lack of consistent measures of misuse behaviors and prevalence between countries. Tramadol is an atypical opioid with a dual mechanism, and has low drug liking compared to conventional opioids. We evaluate tramadol misuse compared to conventional opioids utilizing a harmonized validated national survey across four countries: Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom (UK).

UK survey of non-medical use of prescription drugs (NMURx) as a valuable source of general population illicit drug use data.

Purpose Of Study: The aim of the study is to describe the prevalence of illicit drug use in England and Wales using data from the UK Survey of Non-Medical Use of Prescription Drugs (NMURx) programme and to compare against the well-established Crime Survey England and Wales (CSEW). The rationale is that recreational and illicit drug use is common, but the prevalence is difficult to estimate with personal interviewing methods.

Study Design: We compared two cross-sectional population surveys (NMURx, n=8903 and CSEW, n=20 685) with data regarding self-reported recreational drug use and demographics.