LESS DRUG TAKING BY BRITISH TEENAGERS

Illegal drug-taking among British youngsters has dropped for the first
time since the 1960s, a survey reveals today.

The authors of the study, published in the British Medical Journal,
describe the result as a "startling" turnaround since 1995, when
research showed UK teenagers had the highest rates of drug use in the
world.

Use of ecstasy halved among girls and dropped by nearly two-thirds
among boys. The latest figures, based on answers to questionnaires by
more than 2,600 boys and girls aged between 15 and 16, nevertheless
show widespread drug use.

One-third of girls and almost two-fifths of boys admitted to having
used illicit drugs. Cannabis was the most popular narcotic, and more
than one in 10 respondents said they had abused glues or solvents.
Scottish teenagers confessed to higher rates of drug use than those in
any other part of Britain. The report's co-author Martin Plant,
director of the Edinburgh-based Alcohol and Health Research Centre,
said one reason for the drop could be that drug use had reached a
"natural saturation point".

A decline in drug use in the US in the early 1990s was hailed as proof
that the "Nancy Reagan approach of Just Say No" had paid off, Dr Plant
said. But this had turned out to be a blip, and it might be that the
UK was going through a similar short-term dip.

Certain drugs, such as ecstasy, had acquired a bad name and gone out
of fashion, Dr Plant said.

He went on: "Since drug use began to develop in Britain in the early
1960s the evidence has been of increased use. The picture from the
1995 study showed that the level of drug use was much higher than in
any other industrialised country. But now there is a substantial drop
in reported use of drugs in this age group, with the exception of
girls in Northern Ireland, amongst whom drug use continues to rise."

However, heroin use among both boys and girls has risen, the survey
shows, although the drug remains a minority choice.

Precautions were taken to prevent boastful claims distorting the
survey by having the children fill out the questionnaires
individually, and then post them directly to the researchers.

Dr Plant added: "We did check through each survey individually, and if
there was any obviously silly stuff - such as a 13-year-old boy
claiming that he had drunk enough alcohol the night before to kill a
grown man - we would take it out."