Analysing drug abuse with British Crime Survey data: modelling and questionnaire design issues

We use the British Crime Survey (BCS) to analyse the demand for illicit dru gs and the implications of drug use for the probability of subsequent unemp loyment. We demonstrate that the BCS questionnaire has a serious design fla w for this purpose, and we propose some simple modifications. We also devel op a modelling technique that is suitable for existing BCS data and apply i t to the 1994 and 1996 samples. We find evidence that soft drug use is asso ciated with a greatly increased probability of later hard drug use and that past drug use is associated with increased probabilities of unemployment.