Drug consumption in individual cities, regions, and at various music events and festivals across the EU has generally been monitored via questionnaires, patients' medical data, and police reports. However, an overview of drug consumption obtained from these methods can be negatively affected by various subjective factors. We aimed to investigate an association between levels of target drugs in wastewater, music genres, and festival courses. The occurrence of illicit drugs, their metabolites, and psychoactive compounds was investigated in the influent of six wastewater treatment plants in the Czech and Slovak Republic during seven large-scale music festivals from different music genres: metal, rock, pop, country and folk, ethnic, multi-genre, dance, and trance. The total number of participants included >130,000 active festival attendees. The association between music genre and illicit drug and/or psychoactive pharmaceutical consumptions is discussed on the basis of the results obtained through wastewater analyses. The observed trend was similar to worldwide published data with a specific local phenomenon of methamphetamine prevalence that did not significantly change between music events. Increased specific loads of cocaine (measured as its metabolite benzoylecgonine) and Ecstasy, along with some cannabis, were mainly observed during pop/rock and dance music festivals. However, there was no significant increase observed in the specific loads of all monitored psychoactive pharmaceuticals. This study demonstrates that the abuse of some illicit drugs is closely associated with specific music preferences.

Department of Inorganic Technology Faculty of Chemical and Food Technology Slovak University of Technology Radlinského 9 812 37 Bratislava Slovakia

Department of International Economic Relations and Economic Diplomacy University of Economics in Bratislava Dolnozemská cesta 1 b 852 35 Bratislava Slovakia

Institute of Chemical and Environmental Engineering Faculty of Chemical and Food Technology Slovak University of Technology Radlinského 9 812 37 Bratislava Slovakia

Institute of Chemical and Environmental Engineering Faculty of Chemical and Food Technology Slovak University of Technology Radlinského 9 812 37 Bratislava Slovakia; Department of Zoology and Fisheries Faculty of Agrobiology Food and Natural Resources Czech University of Life Sciences Prague Kamýcká 129 CZ 165 21 Prague Czech Republic

University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice Faculty of Fisheries and Protection of Waters South Bohemian Research Center of Aquaculture and Biodiversity of Hydrocenoses Research Institute of Fish Culture and Hydrobiology Zátiší 728 2 CZ 389 25 Vodňany Czech Republic

University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice Faculty of Fisheries and Protection of Waters South Bohemian Research Center of Aquaculture and Biodiversity of Hydrocenoses Research Institute of Fish Culture and Hydrobiology Zátiší 728 2 CZ 389 25 Vodňany Czech Republic; Department of Analytical Chemistry Faculty of Natural Sciences Comenius University in Bratislava Ilkovicova 6 SK 842 15 Bratislava Slovak Republic

References provided by Crossref.org

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