NCJ Number
154178
Date Published
1995
Length
76 pages
Annotation
Over 7,000 people aged between 12 and 59 who were living in private households in England and Wales and participated in the 1992 British Crime Survey were asked to complete a booklet of questions about their knowledge and use of 13 drugs or substances "which people are not supposed to take unless they have a doctor's prescription."
Abstract
They were asked to indicate whether they had heard of the drugs, whether they had ever taken any of them, if they had been offered any "in the last 12 months," whether they had taken any "in the last 12 months," and which methods of taking drugs they had tried. The drugs asked about were amphetamines, cannabis, cocaine, crack, Ecstasy, heroin, LSD, methadone, temazepam, semeron (a fictitious drug), "Magic Mushrooms" (containing psilocybin), and glue/gas/aerosols as well as "unknown pills" and "something to smoke unknown." The response rate of the 16- to 59-year-olds in the core sample to the ever-taken-a-drug question has been estimated as 72 percent. Almost one-quarter (23 percent) of these respondents failed to indicate on the survey whether they had taken a drug in the last 12 months. The method by which the 12- to 15-year-old sample was collected made it impossible to calculate a precise response rate, but the researchers' best estimate is 55 percent. Extensive tables and figures, 18 references, and an appended questionnaire