Drug Misuse Declared in 2000: Key Results From the British Crime Survey

• NCJ Number: 193691
• Author(s): Clare Sharp; Paul Baker; Chris Goulden; Malcolm Ramsay; Arun Sondhi
• Date Published: 2001
• Length: 4 pages
• Sale Source: Great Britain Home Office Research Development and Statistics Directorate
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Statistics
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom
• Note: See NCJ-193690, Drug Misuse Declared in 2000: Results from the British Crime Survey, Home Office Research Study 224. Home Office Findings 149; downloaded October 8, 2001.

Annotation

This report presented key results from the 2000 British Crime Survey on the changing patterns of illicit drug use by people 16- to 59-years-old.

Abstract

In an attempt to predict future levels of drug use and meet targets set by anti-drug strategies, the British Crime Survey (a large-scale household survey) maintains a component focused on self-reported drug-taking. This component has been used in the 1994, 1996, 1998, and the 2000 surveys. The results of the 2000 survey were presented to assess the progress in relation to heroin, cocaine, and Class A drug use by people 16- to 59-years-old. A major finding indicated that the increase from 1998 in heroin, cocaine, and Class A drug use among 16- to 24-year-olds was not statistically significant. As reported in the survey, around half of the young people 16- to 24-year-olds had tried drugs at some point in their lives and Cannabis remained the most widely consumed drug in all age groups. Since the 1994 BCS survey, results have shown that the proportion of 16- to 24-year-olds using any drug in the last year has remained stable at 29 percent, the rate of overall drug use for 16- to 19-year-olds fell by one fifth in 1994 and rose significantly from 1 to 4 percent in 2000, and those 16- to 24-year-olds using cocaine rose from 1 percent in 1994 to 5 percent in 2000.