http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/index.php/blog/category/select/Society/
Dr Eamonn Butler
"In one of the dark recesses of the British Crime Survey, I discover that drug use is actually going down. The proportion of 16- to 24-year-olds admitting to the use of hallucinogens at some point in their lives has more than halved since 1996, for example - down from 16.1% to 7.9%. Meanwhile, amphetamine use has nearly halved (18.8% to 11.4%), as has the illicit use of tranquilizers (2.9% to 2.2%) and glue-sniffing (5.9% to 3.7%).
Cannabis use is very marginally higher (from 39.6% to 40.9%), and cocaine use has doubled (4.3% to 8.7%) as the drug has become more fashionable. But overall, the numbers who have used Class A drugs fell from 19.4% in 1996 to 15.8% in 2004-05, and the numbers admitting to have used any drug fell from 48.6% to 45.8%.
The explanation of these trends is anybody's guess. It could be that a decade of economic growth has cut unemployment and with it the demand for escapism through drug use. Better drug education might have had an effect. Or could it just be that with longer opening hours, young people are spending more time in the pub? " [Snippet]
