The Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) has been developed from a six-country WHO collaborative project as a screening instrument for hazardous and harmful alcohol consumption. It is a 10-item questionnaire which covers the domains of alcohol consumption, drinking behaviour, and alcohol-related problems. Questions were selected from a 150-item assessment schedule (which was administered to 1888 persons attending representative primary health care facilities) on the basis of their representativeness for these conceptual domains and their perceived usefulness for intervention. Responses to each question are scored from 0 to 4, giving a maximum possible score of 40. Among those diagnosed as having hazardous or harmful alcohol use, 92% had an AUDIT score of 8 or more, and 94% of those with non-hazardous consumption had a score of less than 8. AUDIT provides a simple method of early detection of hazardous and harmful alcohol use in primary health care settings and is the first instrument of its type to be derived on the basis of a cross-national study.

The findings demonstrated that the ASSIST is a valid screening test for identifying psychoactive substance use in individuals who use a number of substances and have varying degrees of substance use.

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The ASSIST items are reliable and feasible to use as part of an international screening test. Further evaluation of the screening test should be conducted.

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These results confirm that long-term heavy cannabis users show impairments in memory and attention that endure beyond the period of intoxication and worsen with increasing years of regular cannabis use.