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The British Crime Survey (BCS) provides an estimate of the number of people in England and Wales who used drugs in the year before interview. The estimated numbed of people aged 16 to 59 in England and Wales who had used crack cocaine in the previous year obtained from the BCS for the year 2004–05 is 32,000.The BCS is a good measure of drug use in the general population and provides a consistent measure of trends over time. However it should be noted that, as a survey of households, the BCS does not cover some groups who may have relatively high rates of crack cocaine use, such as the homeless and prisoners. Nor, in practice, will any household survey cover people whose lives are so busy or chaotic that they are hardly ever at home. Therefore these estimates may underestimate the number of crack users in the country. Home Office commissioned research to obtain better estimates of the number of problematic drug users, including crack users, on a regular basis is currently under way. |