Number of Drug Users

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Adults:

Alcohol:

"Over 90% of British adults drink alcohol.
Nearly half the male population and one in seven women will have been drunk in the past three months.
Despite the licensing laws about 60 per cent of 13 -17 year olds have bought alcohol in a pub or off-licence.
In the 13 -16 year old age group about a third drink at least once a week.
The UK has over 80,000 pubs and similar 'on-licensed' premises, over 50,000 off-licenses (an increasing number of which are in supermarkets), plus over 60,000 licensed restaurants and clubs.
Restrictions on advertising alcohol are less stringent than with tobacco. Unlike tobacco, alcohol is regularly advertised on T.V.
Alcohol is now a major source of government revenue in the UK In 1996 the tax on a bottle of spirits was over £5.50, almost £1.00 on a small bottle of wine and almost 25 pence on every pint of beer sold."
www.drugscope.org.uk/druginfo/alcohol.html

Tobacco:

Drugscope:
"Still about 30% of adults in the UK are smokers and nearly one in five men and 1 in 10 women smoke more than 20 cigarettes a day.
Sales of cigarettes are still a major source of government revenue in the UK In 1996 the tax on a packet of twenty cigarettes was almost £2.00. This amounts to over 9 billion pounds a year in total."
www.drugscope.org.uk/druginfo/drugsearch/ds_results.asp?file=\wip\11\1\1\tobacco.html

NHS Helath Development Agency:
"A third of children in the UK live with one adult smoker - but among low income families, the figure is 57%".
www.hda-online.org.uk/hdt/0101/evidence.htm

Caffeine:

"We drink nearly 123 million cups of tea per day, each cup containing about 40mg of caffeine, but more if the tea is left to brew longer. Coffee is almost as popular with 90 million cups of coffee consumed a day. About 70 per cent of this is instant coffee containing around 60mg of caffeine per cup."
www.drugscope.org.uk/druginfo/drugsearch/ds_results.asp?file=\wip\11\1\1\caffeine.html

Heroin:

"We had 2,000 heroin addicts in 1980: now there are 200,000. The British Crime Survey suggests that nearly half of 16- to 29-year-olds in London take coke."
www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,379866,00.html

Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs report 'Government Drugs Policy: Is it Working?':

20. While around four million people use illicit drugs each year….
12. In 1998, 27% of the population of adults aged 16 and over smoked cigarettes in England and in 1995, over 120,000 deaths were caused by smoking in the UK: 20% of all deaths. The Royal College of Physicians has described cigarette smoking as "the single largest avoidable cause of premature death and disability in Britain" and "the greatest challenge and opportunity for all involved in improving the public health".
13. In 1998, 75% of men and 59% of women had drunk alcohol in the last week, and 37% of men and 20% of women had drunk over the recommended amount in the last week. The toll on health of alcohol misuse is difficult to quantify due to problems of how data is collected. The Department of Health's Statistics on Alcohol: England, 1978 onwards, notes that, depending on definitions, between 5,000 and 40,000 deaths a year can be attributed to alcohol abuse. A report recently published by Alcohol Concern suggested that one in four emergency hospital admissions of men is alcohol-related and that alcohol plays a part in about half of serious road crashes and about half of the incidents of domestic violence. Moreover, in about 40 percent of violent crimes committed in the year 2000 the aggressor was under the influence of alcohol.
14. The 2000 survey reached the following conclusions on prevalence of drug use (in brief):

• Around a third of those aged 16-59 had tried drugs in their lifetime. However, only 11% had used drugs in the last year and 6% in the last month.
• In the 16-29 group, 50% had tried drugs in their lifetime, 25% in the last year and 16% in the last month. This means that, of the nine and a half million young people aged 16-29 in England and Wales, at least 2.3 million would have used an illicit drug in the last year.
• Cannabis was the most commonly used drug: over a fifth of young people aged 16-29 reported using it within the last year, whereas only around 1% of 16-29 year olds had used heroin in the last year, 5% of 16-29 year olds had used cocaine in the last year and around 5% of 16-29 year olds had used ecstasy in the last year.
• In total around a fifth of young people have used Class A drugs in their lifetime, although only 8% reported use in the last year and 4% in the last month.
  89. According to the British Crime Survey 2000, cannabis was the most commonly used of all illegal drugs. Of all respondents aged 16 to 59, 27% said they had tried the drug in their lifetime, 9% had used it in the last year and 6% in the last month. Amongst 16 to 29 year olds, however, 44% had used it in their life, 22% in the last year and 14% in the last month.
  www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102/cmselect/cmhaff/318/31802.htm

Young People:

Comparison: Note these figures are not comparable due to the different time periods measured

Alcohol: "in 2000 only 5 per cent of all pupils aged 11 had had a drink in the last week, but 49 per cent of 15 year olds had done so."
Tobacco: "only 1 per cent of 11 year olds smoke regularly (defined as usually smoking at least one cigarette a week), but almost one quarter (23 per cent) of 15 year olds do."
Cannabis: "2 per cent of 11 year olds had used the drug in the last year compared with 28 per cent of 15 year olds."
All from the Department of Health website, see below.

Alcohol:

"Autumn 2000: Drinking
The proportion of pupils who had had an alcoholic drink in the previous week had risen steadily from 20 per cent in 1988 to 27 per cent in 1996. It then fell for the first time to 21 per cent in 1998 and 1999, and has risen again to 24 per cent in 2000. This figure shows no clear pattern over time.
Both boys and girls were more likely to have drunk in the last week in 2000 than in 1999. In 2000, boys continued to be slightly more likely than girls to have drunk alcohol in the last week (25 per cent compared with 23 per cent).
…in 2000 only 5 per cent of all pupils aged 11 had had a drink in the last week, but 49 per cent of 15 year olds had done so.
The average weekly consumption of alcohol among pupils who drank in the last 7 days has increased steadily from 5.3 units in 1990 (equivalent to almost 3 pints of normal strength beer) to 10.4 units in 2000.
Boys who drink tend to drink more alcohol on average over the course of a week than girls; boys drank an average of 11.7 units in 2000 compared with 9.1 units drunk by girls. For both boys and girls, the mean weekly alcohol consumption of those who drink is higher among older pupils."
www.doh.gov.uk/public/statspntables.htm

Tobacco:

"Autumn 2000: Smoking
The proportion of pupils who were regular smokers (defined as usually smoking at least one cigarette a week) had fallen from 13 per cent in 1996 to 9 per cent in 1999, but increased to 10 per cent in 2000.
As previous surveys have shown, girls are more likely to be regular smokers than boys (12 per cent compared with 9 per cent), and there is a sharp increase in prevalence with age: only 1 per cent of 11 year olds smoke regularly, but almost one quarter (23 per cent) of 15 year olds do.
The proportion of girls who smoked regularly increased from 10 per cent in 1999 to 12 per cent in 2000, and the proportion of boys who smoked regularly changed from 8 per cent to 9 per cent in the same period although this latter change was not statistically significant."
www.doh.gov.uk/public/statspntables.htm

British Medical Association (BMA):
"Approximately 450 children start smoking each day in this country. The younger a person is when they start to smoke, the more likely they are to suffer from a smoking-related illness and the harder it is to stop. A smoker who starts at the age of 15 years is three times more likely to die from lung cancer than someone who starts in their mid-20s.
17 million cigarettes are smoked by children under 16 years in the UK every week."
www.bma.org.uk/ap.nsf/Content/ARCHIVE+Tobacco+Advertising+and+Promotion+Bill+(HL)?OpenDocument&Highlight=2,tobacco

Illegal drugs:

Autumn 2000: "The proportion of pupils who had used drugs in the last month increased from 7 per cent in 1998 to 9 per cent in 2000. The proportion who had used drugs in the last year increased from 11 per cent to 14 per cent over the same period.
The pattern of differences according to sex and age was similar over all three years of these surveys. The proportion of boys taking drugs in the last month (10 per cent) was higher than the proportion of girls (8 per cent), but there was no significant difference between girls and boys in the proportions who had used drugs in the last year at 15 per cent of boys and 13 per cent of girls. There were significant differences by age; in 2000 only 3 per cent of 11 year olds had used drugs in the last year, while 29 per cent of 15 year olds had done so.
In 2000, cannabis was by far the most likely drug to have been used - 12 per cent of pupils aged 11-15 had used cannabis in the last year. Use of cannabis in the last year was slightly higher among boys (13 per cent) than girls (11 per cent). Cannabis use increased sharply with age: 2 per cent of 11 year olds had used the drug in the last year compared with 28 per cent of 15 year olds.
The Government has expressed particular concern about the use of heroin and cocaine, as these are considered the drugs which cause the greatest harm. In 2000, 1 per cent of 11-15 year olds had used opiates (heroin or methadone) in the last year, and 4 per cent had used stimulants (a group of substances which includes cocaine and crack as well as ecstasy, amphetamines and poppers). The proportions of pupils using these types of drugs are small and the survey did not detect any differences between 1998 and 2000.
More than one third of pupils (35 per cent) had been offered one or more drugs. Boys were more likely to have been offered them than were girls (37 per cent compared with 34 per cent).
Again, cannabis was the drug most likely to have been offered (28 per cent of pupils said they had been offered cannabis) but 16 per cent said they had been offered stimulants, 13 per cent that they had been offered glue or gas. A smaller proportion of pupils, 6 per cent, said they had been offered heroin or methadone. As with use of drugs, likelihood of having ever been offered drugs increased sharply with age."
www.doh.gov.uk/public/statspntables.htm

Links:

Young People, 2002: www.doh.gov.uk/public/sddsurvey01.pdf