Illicit drug use in the UK - Evidence from the British Crime Survey

The control of psychoactive substances presents a serious concern for polic y makers who must take into account the allocation of scarce public resourc es resulting from their interventions. Much of the debate in this respect i s carried out within art informational vacuum. This paper presents an analy sis of the survey data currently available to policy makers. We consider th e British Crime Survey (BCS) which is the primary source of UK drug use inf ormation and observe serious limitations to what it can provide. We find th at it does not allow us to effectively analyse the problem of escalating dr ug use, nor can we identified the point of initiation into the drugs market or the duration of use. We recommend that some of these observational prob lems could be overcome lif the BCS drug questions were presented in the rev erse order However, based on the three drug use questions currently present ed in the BCS, we offer an analysis of past and present drug use in terms o f socio-economic factors that are associated with use at the extensive marg in.