Community | February 24, 2011 | 10 comments

Is Britain's Love Affair With Drugs Over?

It seems the British youth are starting to fall out of love with drugs as the number of young people taking illegal substances has fallen by 30% in 15 years.

In the 1960s fewer than 5 per cent of young adults had tried an illegal drug. This reached roughly 10 per cent in the 1970s, and 15-20 per cent in the 1980s. By 1995, nearly half of all young people said they had taken drugs.

But surprisingly in 2011, the number of adults in England and Wales who used illicit substances in 2009-10 was 8.6 per cent – the lowest recorded since the study began in 1996, according to figures released by the NHS in January which are based on data from the British Crime Survey.

Among 16-24-year-olds, the picture was the same, with just 20 per cent saying they had taken drugs in the previous year – another record low, and a third lower than the proportion 15 years ago.

Cocaine use is down, speed is down, cannabis is way down (yet again). LSD use is flat, but just one fifth of what it was in 1996. Though heroin use is also stable, fewer young people are currently requesting treatment for addiction to it.

Meanwhile, in the largest ever survey of drug use among British clubbers, published in this month's edition of Mixmag, there were found to be large year-on-year falls in the number of people taking cannabis (by five percentage points), ketamine (10), ecstasy (five) and cocaine (20).

In this country at least, for reasons that remain mysterious (read the full Guardian article here), drugs seem to be going out of fashion.

So what's up - is the drop down to quality,  price, bad celebrity PR, our are people just becoming more sensible?

What do you think?



  1. groups:
    Community,   News and Politics,   Entertainment,   Culture,   4 more
  2. tags:
    Cannabis,  Drugs,  Weed,  Cocaine,  5 more
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10 comments // Is Britain's Love Affair With Drugs Over?

  • remanns
  • remanns
  • remanns
    • 0
      remanns  

    • If it is,....I'm going to tour in Ireland instead. ( Or the Isle o' Man....)

      You guys DO still drink Guiness,....right ?

    • 1 year ago
  • Stephen_McKenna
    • 0
      Stephen_McKenna  

    • "are people just becoming more sensible" what the fudge. drugs aren't bad its the associations of being illegal that make it bad. alcohol and smoking cause more deaths and are harmful to our society than any other drug.

      this survey also doesn't look at the levels of consumption few people may be taking more.

    • 1 year ago
  • Krushma
  • Alan_Lyddiard
    • 0
      Alan_Lyddiard  

    • The video is of my friend Andrew. I was Artist in Residence at a Homeless Project and we listen to stories of the people involved in the project. It resulted in an installation '100 Faces 100 Stories'. Andrew's video is one of them.

    • 1 year ago
  • Alan_Lyddiard
  • superlaur
    • 0
      superlaur  

    • Going out of fashion, I don't think so.
      I think the main reason for this decline as stated below is the quality, no one wants to gamble (cos lets face it buying recreational drugs has become a gamble) money or their health on someone's idea of a joke.
      Most of the rec drugs in this country today are one homogeneous mess. Novocain, benzocain, phet and 25+ other substances pressed together and sold as whatever substance is required.
      Last year we saw the huge M-CAT boom, because, despite the bad press people were just happy to be getting sh*t that got them high didn't make them puke!

      Either way, whatever the reason it's obviously working because most of the people I know just don't bother any more, is this a good thing? Depends who you ask!

    • 1 year ago
  • Krushma
    • +1
      Krushma  

    • It seems that many cheaper and sometimes legal drugs are becoming more popular than their expensive and overwhelmingly illegal counterparts. concerns over the purity of substances and even ethical issues surrounding the production and distribution may be contributing to these apparent trends.
      As to them going out of fashion - maybe it's true - it used to be "unfasionable" to drink alchohol at raves. Now, at least in some parts of the U.K. it is fashionable and acceptable to drink as much alchohol as possible as many times a week as possible.

      I'm pished right now! At work! I'm a bus driver!

    • 1 year ago
  • organisedbumblebass
sbacker
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