Here too, however, the fundamental traits of the behaviour patterns and ideologies typical of hard drugs users could be discerned. Alongside these the behaviour patterns of occasional drug users also materialised, but as I say it was confined to a narrow circle. The really enormous change took place after the collapse of Communism in close connection to and as a logical consequence of the political processes at work themselves. Obviously the opening up of the frontiers did not have purely positive effects. The sad, but unavoidable concomitant of democracy has been that the drug problem has become large-scale.
Research reveals that the problem has gone through several phases.
The first explosive change occurred in the mid-90s and between 1995 and 1998 drug consumption substantially increased. Between 1995 and 1998 it grew by 250 per cent, which really is a major increase. It might sound tragic if we were not to add that the starting base was that of a very low penetration of drugs in society. This is below the European average. Of the 30 countries taking part in the study Hungary was ranked in 20th place.