English Schoolchildren and Illegal Drugs. I. Levels of Familiarity with Drugs

Abstract

Questionnaires were given to groups of fifteen and sixteen-year-old students in 29 schools in various parts of England, and their reported familiarity with illegal drugs is presented here: those students who have no drug-using acquaintances, those who have such acquaintances but have never been offered an illegal drug, those who have had offers and rejected them all, and those who have ever accepted an offer are distinguished. Levels of acceptance of illegal drugs, which averaged 10.5% across the schools sampled, are compared with levels found in other English surveys. It is concluded that levels of familiarity with illegal drugs varies so much from school to school that attempts to establish a national average figure would not be useful for predicting levels of familiarity in any particular school. Part II of this paper, forthcoming, will discuss changes over the 1-year period 1973-1974.