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40% of teenagers try cannabis - survey

unknown

Press Association

Tuesday 23 Nov 1999


England and Wales have the highest rates of teenage cannabis use in
the EU, a report has warned. Up to 40% of 15 and 16-year-olds have
tried the drug at least once, according to a survey by the EU's drugs
monitoring agency
.

The country also has the worst record for glue sniffing among
teenagers - with 20% having experimented with solvent abuse - and
heroin experimentation, which runs at 2% across the whole of Britain.
The newly published figures coincide with a poll revealing two-thirds
of youngsters believe rock stars encourage drug-taking.

The Melody Maker magazine survey found 65% of readers believed that
rock stars taking drugs encouraged young people to follow suit - and
75% thought most stars indulged in illegal substances. It also found
41% of those taking part in the survey and aged under 26-years-old
admitted to having tried cannabis, while 42% said they had never tried
drugs.

The EU survey found although more young people tried cannabis in
England and Wales than elsewhere, levels of usage had "stabilised or
even decreased" while in parts of Europe where drug abuse used to be
rare it was now on the rise.

The report also found that adults in England and Wales were more
likely to have used cannabis than elsewhere in the EU. About 9% of the
adult population said they had taken the drug in the past year
compared to just 1% in Sweden.

Ecstasy, amphetamine and LSD use in Britain is thought to be higher
than anywhere else in the EU along with Ireland and the Netherlands,
although the popularity of ecstasy has been declining since a peak of
one million doses a week taken in the dance clubs a few years ago.

However, Britain also tops the league of drug seizures with nearly
half of all heroin seized in the EU in 1997 found here.

 

 

 

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