<it>On the increase, and clear links with advertising and sports sponsorship</it>

Are young people in Britain rapidly descending into a state of Hogarthian depravity, as they stagger from the tobacconists to the boozer, mugging an old lady on the way to pay the neighbourhood drug pusher? Tabloid newspapers looking for silly season stories will certainly find plenty to fill their pages from Miller and Plant's survey (p394) of drinking, smoking and illicit drug use among British 15 and 16 year olds.1

Notable soundbites include the finding that three quarters of the sample had been drunk at some time in their lives, while half had consumed more than five drinks in a row at least once in the past 30 days. One in three smoke, four out of 10 have used an illegal drug, and although only 1-2% have tried heroin …