Scottish Crime and Justice Survey on drug use

Scotland’s Chief Statistician has published the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey 2010/11: Drug Use report.

The publication presents statistics on adults’ experiences of illicit drug use and covers self-reported drug use in the last month, the last year and ever.

The main findings of the report include:

• Drug use in Scotland has decreased between 2008–09 and 2010–11 - 6.6% of adults reported using drugs in the last year in 2010/11 compared with 7.2% in 2009–10 and 7.6% in 2008–09.
• Cannabis was the drug adults most commonly reported using - 5.6% of adults reported using cannabis in the last year, and 3.0% reported using cannabis in the last month.
• Cocaine and ecstasy were the next most commonly reported drugs used after cannabis in the last year (1.9% and 1.4% respectively) and in the last month (0.7% and 0.6% respectively).
• Men reported higher levels of illicit drug use than women with almost one in ten (9.5%) men reported using one or more illicit drug in the last year compared with 3.9% of women.
• Around one in nine adults reported that someone had offered to give or sell them at least one illicit drug in the last year. Around 43% of those offered drugs last year reported that they had used drugs in the last year.