Trends - Alcohol

Attitudes to drinking 1983-2001

This report is to be updated and is currently not available for sale.

The following is a summary of the report.

When looking over these many years of figures, we find that young people in recent years are...

* less likely to drink alcohol on at least one day in the last seven (in 2001, 49% of 14-15 year olds and around 26% of 12-13 year olds reported drinking and the majority drank on just one day in the last seven)
* less likely to drink beer, lager, cider, wine and shandy in the previous week (in 2001, 34% of 14-15 year old males reported drinking at least 1 pint of beer 'the last seven days')
* less likely to drink but, on average, those that drink, drink more (in 2001, 21% of the 14-15 year old male drinkers drank 5 or more pints of beer compared with 12% drinking the same amount in 1991)
* more likely to drink pre-mixed spirits - alcopops (in 2001, 25% of 14-15 year olds reported drinking alcopops in the last 7 days)
* more likely, if you are a 14-15 year old female, to drink spirits in the last 7 days (in 2001, 20% of this group reported drinking spirits in the last week and, of these, 25% drank 5 or more measures)

...when compared with figures from previous years.