If you only read the headlines of some British news reports you’d think drug use among teens and even kids in the UK is an out-of-control epidemic. In reality, drug use among young people is down to its lowest level since at least 1996, the first year the British government started recording such drug use stats. 
 
Take for instance the conservative oriented Daily Mail (the UK’s second most popular newspaper). The headline for the Mail’s July 27 online coverage of the annual government drug report read: “Children as young as SEVEN are experimenting with ecstasy and cannabis, shocking study shows.”
 
The study did indeed find that one out of three people who’ve ever tried cannabis did so before age 16. Additionally, six percent of respondents tried cocaine and slightly over eight percent first experimented with MDMA (ecstasy) prior to turning 16, so there are some issues with UK youth using drugs they are not mentally mature enough to consume responsibly.  
 
However, if one simply bothers to scroll down and read the entire story, in actuality drug use among UK high school students is down 12 percent from the ‘90s, with marijuana use rates dropping the most. Cocaine and ecstasy use are down from the ‘90s as well, and even more encouraging, cigarette smoking among Brit teens is at its lowest rate in three decades. 
 
Drug use among all UK residents age 16 to 59 is down from 2011, but you wouldn’t have found out any of that news from the headline hyperbole about little kids smoking pot – yet another example of how yellow journalism tries to denigrate the green. 
 
More @ www.dailymail.co.uk