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| Tackling Drugs in Scotland: Action in Partnership |
| chapter 1 |
| Several recent surveys of school children provide further evidence of DRUG misuse by sections of young people in Scotland |
| Part 1: The Challenge |
| Where are we now? |
| This chapter explains the patterns and trends in drug misuse in Scotland, and illustrates the nature of the challenge. |
| Drugs misuse in Scotland is a complex problem, involving both legal and illegal drugs, and impacting on the lives of a wide variety of individuals. |
| These range from primary schoolchildren to adults, from those experimenting with drugs to those heavily dependent. Drug misuse affects not only the life of the user, but their family, neighbours and the community in which they live. |
| There are, of course, inextricable links between drug misuse, smoking and alcohol misuse. Tobacco and alcohol use often provide a gateway into illicit drug use. This strategy focuses primarily on the misuse of illicit drugs, but fully recognises that the problem is multi-faceted. The Government has set out a comprehensive package of measures to tackle smoking in its recent White Paper Smoking Kills. Work is also under way to develop a national alcohol misuse strategy for Scotland. In view of the linkages it is vital that action taken to implement the three strategies is complementary. |
| The following text describes the nature of illicit drug use in Scotland based on information from a wide range of sources. There are four sections, reflecting the four main strategic aims of the strategy set out in this document. |
| Young People |
| Drugs misuse is a feature in the lives of many young people. A number of surveys provide evidence of the availability and misuse of illicit drugs by young people in Scotland. Information from the Scottish Crime Survey carried out in 1993 and 1996 shows that around one in four young men aged 16-19 and around one in five young women aged 16-19 had used drugs in the last twelve months (Figure 1). In 1996, for males aged 20-24 the proportion rises to over one in three (37%). |
| Figure 1 - Reported drug use by young people in the last 12 months |
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Source : 1993 and 1996 Scottish Crime Surveys |
| Several recent surveys of school age children provide further evidence of drug misuse by sections of young people in Scotland. One survey carried out in 1998 by the Research Unit in Health and Behavioural Change (Health Behaviour in School Age Children: a WHO cross national study, HBSC) shows the range of drugs which have been reported as ever used by a sample of young people in year four of secondary school (Figure 2). |
| Figure 2 - Reported ever use by secondary 4 pupils |
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Source : HBSC |
| It is clear that cannabis is the most frequently reported drug ever used among secondary 4 (S4) pupils in this study, with 42% reporting use. These findings are broadly consistent with the findings of other national surveys amongst children of school-age (e.g. those conducted by the Scottish Council for Research in Education, Fast Forward and the Alcohol and Health Research Group). |
| The HBSC study also found that, of those S4 pupils who had ever tried drugs, around one in five (22%) had first tried drugs at twelve years or younger. This was supported by another study, carried out by the Centre for Drugs Misuse Research at the University of Glasgow, which found that one in ten children in year one of secondary school had reported having tried using illegal drugs. Reports of drug misuse from other European countries show that Scotland is not alone in this problem, other countries have similar rates of lifetime use of certain drugs. |
| It is not only the misuse of drugs by young people which causes concern. Children living in families where drugs are regularly used are also at risk. Based on information obtained by treatment agencies in 1996/97, around one in five of all people who seek help for problem drug use report living with dependant children (source: Scottish Drug Misuse Database). This proportion, which may itself be under-reported, takes no account of drug users whose children do not live with them. A recent interview survey of four hundred drug injectors in Greater Glasgow found that 60% were the parent to one child or more (source: Scottish Centre for Infection and Environmental Health (SCIEH), provisional). |
| Communities |
| Scotland's drug problem has a wide-ranging and highly damaging effect on the quality of life for individuals and communities. Not only do these communities suffer from the deaths and health problems caused by drugs, but they suffer also from the crime arising from drug misuse. The number of offences under the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act has increased from around 5,000 in 1988 to over 29,000 in 1997 _ and, as a percentage of all recorded crimes, drug crime increased from 5.2% in 1995 to 7% in 1997. But, besides these obvious offences of drug possession and dealing, drug misusers often commit crimes to fund drug purchases _ and drug taking may also lead to other crimes and anti-social acts, including dangerous driving. Recent research in Glasgow suggests that at one time the city's 8,500 heroin injectors were committing an estimated 2.6 million offences a year, mostly involving shoplifting, theft and drug dealing. A modern society cannot tolerate that kind of disruption to community life. |
| There is evidence of an association between deprivation and certain types of drugs misuse. Information from hospitals on patients admitted for reasons of drug misuse shows a higher rate of admission by patients living in deprived areas than in more affluent areas (Figure 3). |
| Figure 3 - Drug Misuse: Non-psychiatric hospital admissions, 1997/981 |
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Source : SDMD, 1997/98 data are provisional |
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