Final Report of the European Drug Emergencies Network (Euro‐DEN) - March 2015

The European Drug Emergencies Network (Euro‐DEN) is a two year European Commission DG Justice DPIP funded project. It was led by the Clinical Toxicology Service at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and King’s Health Partners, London, UK together with Steering Group members from Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway; Hospital Universitari Son Espases, Palma de Mallorca, Spain; and the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), Lisbon , Portugal.

The EMCDDA collects data on a number of key indicators related to drug and new psychoactive substance (NPS) use in Europe, these contribute to our understanding of the scale and impact of the use of drugs in Europe. However, despite the potential for drugs/NPS to cause significant morbidity and mortality, there is no standardised routine collection of data on acute drug/NPS toxicity or hospital presentations at a national level in Europe. This is a significant data gap in the understanding of the public health impact of these substances. The EU Drugs Strategy 2005‐12 stated that new approaches to improve the knowledge of drug‐related adverse consequences and assess the risks associated with drugs in general, and NPS in particular, were required. One of the components of the EU Drug Strategy 2013‐20 is to ensure a reduction in health harms caused by drugs in Europe. The Euro‐DEN project provides a system to inform the first of these EU Drug Strategy objectives and to enable monitoring to inform the second objective.