The second meeting of the French CEIP (Centres d'Evaluation et d'Information sur la Pharmacodépendance) was organized during the annual congress of the French Society of Pharmacology Therapeutics and Physiology in 2008. The aim of this meeting was to update the knowledge on abuse and dependence of the anxiolytics and hypnotics from different points of view (pharmacoepidemiology, epidemiology and treatment). The first part of this meeting summarized the pharmacological data obtained by the pharmacoepidemiological tools developed by the CEIP network. Even if the abuse liability of these agents is not a new problem, it remains always present and characterized by differences of misuse between drugs in real-life settings. The second part targeted to a subtype of consumers, the elderly population, because older patients are more likely to be prescribed with multiple prescriptions and also more at risk for prescription abuse. Despite this evidence, there is a scarcity of information on the factors associated with a such behaviour and its screening, assessment, diagnosis and treatment.