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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Almost 11 million people in Britain have taken drugs
Nigel Morris The Independent
Friday 28 Oct 2005 Almost 11 million Britons have taken illegal drugs, including four million who have experimented with class A substances such as heroin and cocaine. The regular part played by drugs in many people's lives was disclosed yesterday by research which estimated that 2.1 million used them every month. There are signs that drug-taking is beginning to level off or fall, including the use of cannabis, which was controversially downgraded last year from a class B to a class C substance. But it remains at higher levels than seven years ago, when the recently elected Labour government lauched a concerted drive to cut drug addiction. Over that period, the numbers of those aged 16 to 59 who regularly take hard drugs increased sharply, mainly caused by a large rise in cocaine use between 1998 and 2000. Figures from the British Crime Survey, which interviewed nearly 50,000 people, showed cannabis was the preferred choice of most drug users, with 9.7 per cent of the population taking it in the last year. That was a significant fall from 2003-04, when 10.8 per cent reported using it, coinciding with the reclassification of the drug, making possession of small amounts largely a non-arrestable offence. The next most commonly used drug was cocaine (2 per cent), followed by ecstasy (1.8 per cent), amphetamines (1.4 per cent) and amyl nitrite or poppers (1.2 per cent). Regular use of the most addictive drugs was much more limited " only 0.1 per cent told researchers they had taken heroin in the last year. Among under-25-year-olds, cannabis use fell from 24.8 per cent in 2003- 04 to 23.5 per cent in the latest figures. The proportion of young people who said they used any kind of drug in the previous year also fell from 27.8 per cent to 26.3 per cent. But usage rate remained little changed from 1998, when the Government launched its anti-drugs strategy, setting itself the target of cutting the proportion of under-25s using illegal drugs.
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