News

Drug use among teenagers may not be as high as believed, new evidence suggests.

According to research by Frank, the free national drugs information service provided by the Department of Health and the Home Office, one in five teenagers say their friends pretend to take drugs in order to "fit in with their tribe".

It finds that boys are twice as likely as girls to succumb to peer pressure and say they have taken drugs when they have not.

"The ways in which young people talk about themselves to their peers helps them to create a sense of self," said report author Peter Marsh, director at the Social Issues Research Centre. "To be an individual, we first need to be one of the lads or lasses."

Figures published by the Office for National Statistics in March reveal that 31 per cent of males aged 16 to 19 and 24 per cent of females in the same age group used drugs in 2000.