The epidemiology of self-reported drug misuse in the United Kingdom.
Self-report methods are, in general, the only feasible way of obtaining information of the prevalence of drug misuse, other than opiate misuse, in the population. The present review examines the results of surveys of self-reported drug misuse conducted in the United Kingdom between 1968 and 1972 and discusses the findings in terms of the uses of epidemiology. The evidence from the surveys suggests that by 1972, a higher proportion of students in higher education, particularly those following courses in the social sciences, admitted to having ever misused controlled drugs compared with the general population of similar age. There were considerable local and regional variations in the prevalence of self-reported misuse. The majority of those who admitted to having ever misused drugs in the samples surveyed since 1970 said they had misused cannabis. The only individual characteristics that were found to be consistently associated with admitting to having ever misused drugs were favourable attitudes to drugs and slightly elevated neuroticism scores.
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002188:Cannabis; D004812:Epidemiologic Methods; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012306:Risk; D013334:Students; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology*; D006113:United Kingdom