The MedSPAD Committee, currently made up of representatives from 14 countries (Algeria, Croatia, Cyprus, Egypt, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Lebanon, Malta, Morocco, Portugal, Tunisia, Turkey) and the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction held its 10th meeting in Paris, on 10-11 April 2019. The meeting took place within the 2019 work programme of the Mediterranean network for co-operation on drugs and addictions.
The Committee’s main objective is to share experiences among the countries who have conducted school surveys and collect information on the prevalence of substance use among adolescents, to be used to formulate drug policy. The whole MedSPAD project for the period 2018-2019 is part of the South Programme III, a joint programme funded by the European Union and implemented by the Council of Europe under its project “Ensuring Sustainable Democratic Governance and Human Rights in the Southern Mediterranean”.
At the meeting, the Committee agreed on the steps forward concerning the 2019 MedSPAD regional report which will contain information on substance use prevalence in the participating countries, including age of first use, availability of substances and socio-economic context.