Guidelines for the prevalence of problem drug use (PDU) key indicator at local level

Prevalence of problem drug use (PDU) is one of five key indicators used by the EMCDDA to provide more comparable, scientifically based estimates of the prevalence of more severe patterns of drug use that cannot be reliably measured by surveys. This information is useful for assessing treatment needs, and offers a realistic basis for estimating the social costs of drug problems, for example drug-related crime. This document has been produced by the EMCDDA to provide guidelines for estimating PDU prevalence at the local level. It describes methods for estimating the prevalence of drug misuse at the local level, in particular the capture-recapture method.