§ Mr. ButlerTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is his best estimate of the current number of(a) opiate abusers and (b) non-opiate abusers in the United Kingdom.
§ Mr. MellorInformation about the numbers of drug addicts notified to the Home Office in 1988 was published in Home Office statistical bulletin, issue 13/89, "Statistics of Drug Addicts notified to the Home Office, United Kingdom, 1988", a copy of which is in the Library. Notification applies only to certain controlled drugs, mainly opiates, but including cocaine, and many misusers will not have sought treatment and so will not have been notified. The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs has estimated that there may be between 75,000 and 150,000 misusers of notifiable drugs in the United Kingdom, and as many again misusing a variety of non-notifiable drugs such as amphetamine (but excluding cannabis) on an experimental or occasional basis.
§ Mr. ButlerTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what was the number and weight of seizures of(a) cocaine, (b) crack and (c) heroin in each of the last five years.
§ Mr. MellorInformation about seizures by the police and Customs of cocaine and heroin from 1978 to 1988 was published in table 2.4 of Home Office statistical bulletin issue 30/89, "Statistics of the Misuse of Drugs: Seizures and Offenders Dealt with, United Kingdom, 1988", a copy of which is in the Library. Comparable information is not yet available for 1989.
Crack is a form of cocaine which was not analysed and reported separately before 1987 and has not, so far, been recorded separately in published statistics. Seizures of crack by the police and Customs and reported to the National Drugs Intelligence Unit since 1987 are as follows:
Year Seizures Grams 1987 12 6.7 1988 27 113.7 1989 1139 243 1 Provisional figures.