A profile of alcohol and drug clients in New Zealand: results from the 1998 national telephone survey

Aims. To describe the profile of clients seen across the broad spectrum of dedicated alcohol and drug treatment services in New Zealand. Methods. 217 randomly selected alcohol and drug treatment workers in New Ze aland were interviewed by telephone, yielding a randomly selected sample of 291 clients. Workers were asked to identify the age, gender, ethnicity, ma in substance use problem and geographical location of clients. Results. 60% of clients were male, 28% were Maori, the mean age was 31 year s and the largest group of clients were seen for alcohol related issues (45 %), followed by cannabis (27%) and opioids (17%). None of these variables d iffered significantly across residential/non-residential services. Signific ant trends to emerge were: that Maori clients were more likely to live rura lly and to be in treatment for cannabis use, women were more likely to be i n treatment for benzodiazepine use and less likely for cannabis use, opioid users were more likely to be seen at Crown Health Enterprise funded servic es, and cannabis users were (on average) younger than other clients, while alcohol users were older. Conclusions. Alcohol and drug treatment services are dominated by clients s eeking assistance with alcohol and cannabis use problems. Women are not und er-represented in this population Maori are over-represented. This contrast s with the absence of Asian clients and an underrepresentation of Pacific I sland clients. There are some significant variations in the types of drugs used by different demographic treatment seeking populations. In contrast, c lient differences across treatment settings are minimal.