The Canadian Alcohol and Drug Use Monitoring Survey, also known as CADUMS, is no longer in use, as it was replaced by the Canadian Tobacco, Alcohol and Drugs Survey, or CTADS, in 2013. However, the final results have been put online by the Canadian government, and it can be interesting to look at what information was found.
For one thing, the lifetime use rate of marijuana has been trending down. Back in 2004, it was 44.5 per cent, and the average age was 15.6 years old. In 2012, the per cent was down to 41.5 and the average age was 16.1 years old.
Cocaine use has followed the same trend. In 2004, when asked if they'd used it in the last year, 1.9 per cent of people said that they had. In 2012, the last year the survey was done, just 1.1 per cent gave the same answer.
You'll find that this trend is true for many drugs. Over the same time period, ecstasy fell from 1.1 per cent to 0.6 per cent. Speed dropped from 0.8 per cent to 0.5 per cent by 2011.
One of the groups that climbed, though, was hallucinogens. They came in at just 0.7 per cent in 2004, but they had reached 0.9 per cent by 2012.
As you can see, none of these changes were huge, and it could be argued that drug use stayed roughly the same over the eight-year period. However, there is a slight downward trend, so it will be interesting to see if that continues with the new survey.
While these numbers may be showing a positive trend, there will still be Canadian residents who get accused of illegal drug use. In these situations it's important to understand your legal rights.
Source: Health Canada, "Canadian Alcohol and Drug Use Monitoring Survey," accessed April 07, 2016
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