The Finnish service system for substance abusers comprises general social and health care services and special services designed specifically for substance abusers. Current statistical and register sources provide reasonably accurate data on intoxicantrelated admissions to institutional social and health care services, but only limited information is available from these sources on such areas as outpatient care and housing services. Conducted at four-year intervals since 1987, Finnish surveys of intoxicant-related cases are designed to complement the information obtained from statistics and registers and to shed broader light on how and where substance abuse clients are met within the service system, what these clients are like and what their contacts are like with the service system. The survey involves collecting data on all intoxicantrelated visits to social and health care services during the course of one day; the only services excluded are children's day care. This article analyses the results of the 2011 survey of intoxicant-related cases. The findings are compared with those from 2007 and 2003. We have two main research questions, which are approached from the vantage-point of the service system: Firstly, from a division of labour point of view, we are interested in how the care of intoxicant abusers is organized in different parts of the country. Secondly, we want to know how intoxicant-related visits break down between different areas of the service system and whether there have been any changes in this regard during the 2000s. Regions and their internal division of labour were examined by studying which type of services had received the largest number of intoxicant-related visits during the survey day. In most regions the main focus of customer contacts was with health care services. In six regions the main division of labour burden was carried by special intoxicant-related services. In the region of Kainuu in the north, the main division of labour focus was on general social services, in South Savo intoxicant-related visits were evenly divided between general health care, special intoxicant-related services, social services and housing services. A growing proportion of intoxicant-related visits today are to primary health care services and specifically to health centre outpatient services. A different trend is observed for special intoxicant-related services: here the number of visits has only increased for detox programmes and health counselling centres. The number of intoxicant-related client contacts with housing services for older people has more than doubled since the previous survey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]