A national household survey of drug misuse in Britain: a decade of development

Like most other countries, Britain has lagged behind the United States in developing a fully-fledged national household survey of drug misuse. Building on some initial efforts in the early 1990s, the 1994 British Crime Survey (BCS) and the 1995 National Drugs Campaign Survey (NDCS) and various other large-scale household surveys have provided fresh insights into drugs prevalence and patterns of misuse. These developments-their achievements and their limitations-are reviewed here. Particular attention is paid to the development of self-report methodologies: both the BCS and the NDCS rely on interviewees personally entering their responses on to laptop computers. Some of the main findings of these surveys are also briefly discussed.